


Follow the Skyline Down

by raving_liberal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Apocalypse, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Big Bang 2018, Eye Trauma, F/M, Gallows Humor, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by The Road, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Nuclear Winter, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Canon, Survival, Survivor Guilt, Team as Family, capbb2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-17 22:38:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16105250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: In the wake of an explosion that destroys New York City and leaves an afterimage of the skyline burned into Steve’s retinas, Steve and Natasha walk across the country to find a safe haven, supplies, and—hopefully—allies. Through twisted landscapes and hostile survivors, facing a bleak nuclear winter and wide-scale destruction, Nat and Steve make a promise to each other to survive, tocontinue. Haunted by memories of the life he was just starting to build with Bucky, Steve finds that promise harder to keep with each passing mile.





	Follow the Skyline Down

**Author's Note:**

> Art for this work is by the lovely [casdeansintrouble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annamaymasters5319/pseuds/casdeansintrouble). The art masterpost can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16028642).
> 
> Tremendous thanks to david_of_oz for his patience and wisdom as my editor. Truly the best in the business!
> 
> Shout out to the_ink_stained_knight for beta-reading and for being my fic buddy as we both encouraged each other through this process!

“Steve.”

Natasha’s voice cuts through the fog of his thoughts, shrill as a drill sergeant’s whistle. Jesus, she’s irritating sometimes. Had he never really noticed that before all of this? If not, how’d he miss it? He just wants to rest for a minute; surely he’s entitled to one goddamn minute of rest after everything, and she just keeps on and on, mile after mile. Continuing. 

“Steve!” she says, sharper this time. “Get up.”

He holds up his right index finger, asking for that minute, that single goddamn minute she can let him have. Hell, she can just leave him there in that minute for all he cares, staring at the silhouette of a dead city, black cutouts of buildings pasted on an ashen sky. They’re already over a week’s walk from New York, but when he relaxes his eyes he still sees it in front of him, a ghost city laid on top of the highway, a hillside forest, a dying cornfield. He told Natasha about it on the fourth day. She said it was from the flash, that he must have been looking when it happened and the city was burned into his retinas now. She said it might heal, him being what he is. He hopes she’s wrong. If that’s the last glimpse he’ll ever have of home, he hopes it’s overlaid onto everything else he sees for the rest of his life.

He hopes the rest of his life isn’t long enough for his retinas to heal.

“Goddammit, Steve, get up!” Natasha shouts at him. In the distance, a few startled birds burst into flight. They’re seeing fewer and fewer birds each day. Steve tries not to question what that means.

“Yeah,” Steve says, after the sound of wings fades. He stands slowly, the straightening curve of his back as he pushes his palms against his thighs telegraphing how much he begrudges Natasha this insistence on _continuing_. She should have let him go back into the city to sift through the ash. God, the ash again! She should have let him search for familiar bones in the rubble: a metal scapula, a skull with one gold molar on the left side. 

That crown cost Bucky an arm and a leg, but the vanity of him wouldn’t let him let them pull the tooth and leave a gap, and somehow, through Hydra and the Russians and Hydra again, he managed to hang on to it. Is a gold tooth shining in an empty skull or did it melt or incinerate with the rest? They don’t know the source of the flash. Would Steve have even found bones at all or did everything organic crumble into dust, a gut-punch déjà vu? 

“I know you’re tired, Steve,” Natasha tells him, voice softer this time, like she knows what he’s thinking. He wonders for the hundredth time if she actually can read minds, if that was her gift from the Russians, while Bucky got nothing but a metal arm and a memory more full of holes than Winifred Barnes’ good lace tablecloth.

“We’re both tired, Nat,” Steve says. He brushes ash from the knees of his pants, though he doesn’t bother wiping off the shield when he picks it up. Let it stay grimy. Better to not attract the attention. He would’ve left it behind if Natasha had let him, he hadn’t wanted it back, but she insisted the symbol was important, even now. He was so tired of being a goddamn symbol. He wants a hot shower, a bowl of beef and barley stew with extra carrots, about two dozen cups of coffee, and the smell of Bucky’s aftershave lingering on his collar for the rest of the day after a tight hug. Symbolism could go take a flying leap.

“I think we could make Cincinnati by nightfall,” Natasha says. Now that Steve’s actually focused on her, he sees she’s got the atlas open again, a three-page map unfolded from inside it. The New York City skyline flickers dimly over the map—the Brooklyn Bridge spans the fold between pages two and three—until he blinks it away. “Maybe not as far as that, but I’d like to try?” The tone of the last word lilts upwards just enough to make it sound like a question he’s obligated to answer. He knows what he owes her, even if he resents it.

“I don’t want us to push through if it means walking past dark,” he says. “I don’t want a repeat of last time.”

Last time taught them that desperate people grow bolder in the absence of light, that a small campfire draws less attention than two people walking down a turnpike with no flashlights or headlamps on. Last time gave them a taste of the weeks and months still to come. Last time ended with Steve bashing in a man’s skull with the shield. Steve still has the blood and brains from _last time_ crusted in the eyelets of his boots. 

“We could make it,” Natasha insists. “It might be worth it to press on. There’s a safehouse just outside the city, across the river in Kentucky. We could find supplies there. Reinforcements. Allies.”

When she absently touches one fingertip to her necklace, he knows she means Clint, even if she won’t say it. They both know it’s far more likely Clint was with Laura and the kids at the farmhouse, where he’d still been stuck under house arrest, despite everything that happened with Thanos. They all might even be alive there—Clint’s resourceful and well-trained, Laura’s tough as they come—but one thing the Bartons probably _aren’t_ is at a safehouse outside Cincy. 

“We stop at dark,” he says. Natasha’s chin juts forward briefly as she obviously fights her natural-born impulse to argue with him. The motion makes her face younger and more heart-shaped, and he remembers then that this is his friend, that he loves her and yet is still treating her like a bratty kid treats his least favorite babysitter. Steve is resentful, yes, and more than a little angry, but Natasha hasn’t held any of that against him. He claps a hand to her shoulder and squeezes gently, and she does him the courtesy of taking the gesture for what it is: an apology and a reminder that they’re in this together, this business of continuing. She leans into his hand for a second, flashes the briefest sliver of a smile.

“If we don't make it before dark, we’ll stop,” she concedes. 

“MREs and potassium iodide, the dinner of champions,” Steve says in the Captain America voice. _A bullet in your best guy’s gun._ Natasha wrinkles up her nose at him.

“Ew,” she says, though she doesn’t specify whether she’s ewwing the meal or the voice. Both, maybe.

“We still don’t know for sure what that blast was. Until we get equipment to test for radiation, we’ve gotta assume that’s what it was, and potassium iodide’s the best we’ve got for now.”

“I know that,” she says, rolling her eyes at him. “I like my thyroid as much as the next girl. Still, ew.”

As if on cue, a snowflake falls and lands on the back of Steve’s hand, the one gripping the shield. He looks up into a sudden flurry floating down from the steely, skyline-overlaid clouds. The day they fled Port Jersey, the day of the blast, barely more than a week ago, was June 4th. Steve might never get over the fact that the world ended while he was in Jersey. 

“Well shit,” Natasha says as she stares up into the swirl of snow. 

“Better get moving,” Steve says. “It’s only gonna get worse from here on out.”

Natasha folds up her atlas and stuffs it back into her rucksack, glancing back at Steve over her shoulder. “How did anybody ever get it into their heads that you were an optimist?”

“Propaganda films from the ’40s,” Steve offers. He hooks the shield onto his own pack, waiting for Natasha to start walking again. She stares at him for a few beats instead, like she’s getting a read on him. He fights the urge to look away or wipe his face with the back of his hand, and eventually she turns back towards the road, feet already moving fast enough that she makes it a few yards before Steve registers it and hustles after her. 

They travel at a good clip for the next few hours, but as the grey sky darkens, they still haven’t made it to Cincinnati. Natasha doesn’t speak as she stops under an overpass and begins setting up camp in the vee of two cars interlocked forever in a T-bone, but she snaps her bedroll out sharply before laying it down flat. Her movements carry as much tension as they do intention. Steve lets her go through the steps she established for them on the first night: make camp, scout the perimeter, light a small fire in the camp stove. He stands guard, shield on his arm and back to the camp until Natasha settles onto her bedroll with an irritated huff.

“Salisbury steak or ham?” Natasha asks him, the signal for him to turn around. She has an MRE in each hand. 

“Salisbury steak got the good green beans?” 

“Salisbury steak has potatoes. Ham has carrots and a roll.”

Steve knows Natasha hates potatoes with the kind of visceral loathing that suggests it’s a matter of trauma, not of taste. Still, he was just thinking about carrots. He weighs both options while Natasha sits there with her carefully blank neutral face, but ultimately Steve knows not having potatoes means more to her than having carrots means to him. The decision’s easy.

“I’ll take the steak. Couldn’t come between you and a dinner roll,” Steve says, reaching for the lefthand packet. Natasha’s face briefly registers surprise, and Steve realizes that the MREs’ labels are both facing inward towards Natasha, so he couldn’t read them. He understands suddenly that she always puts the MRE she would prefer in the hand closest to Steve, making sure he knows it’s available to him. Not just this past week, though it means even more now, but on every mission they’ve ever worked together. He never noticed it before.

The fierce gratitude that wells up in Steve’s chest forces his eyes closed, so he’s not blinking back tears against the afterimage of One World Trade Center on the left and the Oculus on the right. He’s been a shit to her since the flash, sullen and pissed off and resentful, yet here she is, willing to choke down potatoes like she thinks Steve doesn’t remember that night she was two-thirds of the way into a bottle of vodka and confessed to him it was the only thing made from potatoes that didn’t make her gag. She’d vomited in Steve and Bucky’s kitchen sink just two glasses later, and Steve had held back her hair and gently teased her that maybe vodka potatoes didn’t much agree with her either. She fell asleep on their couch that night with her face hidden in Steve’s shoulder and her feet across Bucky’s leg, and when Steve eased her down to lie flat, her head on a pillow in his lap, his shirt where her face had been pressed was wet with tears.

“What?” Steve asks in feigned confusion when he can finally open his eyes again. “Salisbury steak packet’s always thicker than the ham.” 

It isn’t, and Natasha know this, but she smiles anyway. “It’s probably the gravy.”

“If you can even call that gravy,” Steve says disparagingly as he opens his MRE. “I’ve had meatier-tasting toothpaste.”

“Was that during the war?” Natasha asks.

“You think we had toothpaste during the war? We were using baking soda by Spring of ’44, if we were _lucky_.”

Natasha laughs. God, it’s a good sound. “Liar,” she says. “I bet they flew it in special just for you and the Howling Commandos.”

“Only if we were gonna be shooting one of the newsreels, swear to Mother Mary herself,” Steve says.

“Don’t try to bullshit me with Catholicism, Steven. You’re about as Catholic these days as I am Russian Orthodox,” Natasha says, laughing again.

“Well, I started out that way,” Steve says. He crosses himself. “Hand to God.”

“я тоже,” Natasha counters, though Steve has no idea what it means.

“Best of intentions, right?” Steve asks.

Natasha smiles, a slow, wide smile. A real smile. “Да.”

That, at least, Steve understands. “Yeah. Would’ve been a hell of a Cold War with you and me in it, Nat. A hell of a thing.”

“I think we’ve seen enough hell between the two of us,” she says softly. Her smile is gone now. She’s right, of course, but the hell isn’t over yet. That’s the nature of hell. There’s always more where that came from, and always more war, too.

“First watch,” Steve says, before Natasha can remember they’re doing this on the dibs system.

“You had first last night,” she says, “plus last watch the night before that.”

“I keep telling you I don’t need that much sleep,” he says.

Natasha shoots him the ‘don’t bullshit a bullshitter’ look she and Bucky both had down pat. “Insomnia isn’t the same as not needing sleep.” 

“Got by on two, three hours on a good night during the war,” Steve says.

“Which was seventy years ago, before you were technically geriatric,” Natasha counters.

Steve reaches into the left side pocket of his fatigues and fishes out a penny. Unlike Steve, it’s newly minted and still sunshine-bright, or would be, if sunshine were still a thing the sky did these days. Instead, the camp stove’s light reflects off the hollows of Lincoln’s face. Steve considers for a moment that he was born closer to Lincoln’s lifetime than he was to the present day. 

“Flip you for it,” he says to Natasha.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Heads or tails?”

“Heads. I can always shake a tail.”

Steve laughs and flips the coin. It lands tails up on his dirty palm. Natasha looks as smug as if she’s performed an act of prestidigitation on the coin in midair to make it come up tails. Steve considers for a moment that that might actually be within her skillset.

“You,” Natasha says, pointing at him. “Eat your shitty Salisbury steak and toothpastey gravy and sad-sack potatoes, then lay yourself down and give me three solid hours of sleep.”

“Yes, drill sergeant!” Steve snaps back at her. 

Natasha’s face goes mild, just barely on the pleasant side of neutral. “I could make your drill sergeant cry.”

“Yeah, well, me too,” Steve says, “but only on account of what a hopeless lost cause I was.”

“Eat,” is all Natasha says, and then, after he shovels most of the MRE into his mouth in a few bites, “sleep.”

“You wake me in three, no matter what,” Steve says, spreading out his bedroll and lying down.

“Of course,” she says.

Steve closes his eyes. The camp stove casts enough light that he can see the city on the back of his eyelids, and he’s positive he won’t be able to fall asleep, but then he manages it anyway.

“Steve.”

Natasha doesn’t shake him awake. She wasn’t a soldier, but she sleeps like one, and she knows not to shake him, not to touch him when he’s asleep. Captain America wasn’t allowed to have shellshock, but Steve Rogers sometimes wakes up throwing a punch or reaching for his shield or Bucky’s rifle. The Black Widow wasn’t allowed to have PTSD, but Natasha Romanoff sometimes wakes up with her hand wrapped around a knife or someone’s throat. They learned this about each other a couple of missions in, and nothing that happened since then made it any better.

“Steve?”

Steve opens his eyes. Natasha is within his eyeline, but not directly over him and not too close. He sits up and runs his fingers up through his hair, brushing it off his forehead.

“Yeah. I’m awake,” he says.

“Three hours,” Natasha says, throwing herself down onto her bedroll. She instantly feigns sleep, and even though Steve continues watching for her twenty minutes or more, he’s never sure when—or if—the feint becomes reality. Eventually, he gives up and turns his attention to the perimeter. 

Steve’s three hours pass slowly, and despite what he told Natasha about not needing sleep, towards the end of his watch, he’s nodding a little. Every noise starts to sound like footsteps, startling him back to wakefulness. He would commit actual murder for a cup of coffee right now. Double homicide for some milk and sugar to stir into it. He and Bucky both drank it black back in Brooklyn before the war, but just like Steve eventually adjusted to his marshmallow of a bed, he also developed a distinctly civilian preference for light, sweet coffee. And his fancy modern coffee machine? That was like a dream come true.

Bucky still drank his black, though sometimes he’d accept an espresso from the machine instead of a plain old cup of joe. He was different after Thanos. Quiet. Steve didn’t mind, because he’d been quieter, too, ever since they took him out of the ice. He was just glad to have Bucky back home after everything. They thought it was going to be a kind of starting over.

“But it wasn’t, was it, pal?” Bucky asks.

Steve lets his head hang, elbows resting on his knees. “No. It was just over.”

“Who would’ve thought it, though? We fought Hydra, aliens, gods, even each other, and none of it ever seemed to stick.” Bucky shifts beside Steve, his face in darker shadows than the rest of him. The camp stove’s light glints off his arm.

“This one stuck good enough, I guess,” Steve says. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Really did the trick, didn’t it?”

“Listen, Buck—”

Bucky waves him off. “You don’t have to say it, alright? I know. I always knew.”

“I would’ve, though,” Steve says. “If I’d’ve had the chance.”

“We never were gonna be the ones that decided where the line ended, Steve. We knew that. We were soldiers.”

“Were? What are we now?”

Bucky sounds resigned. “Just at the end.”

Steve looks over at Bucky, but can’t make out his face in the shadows. All he can see is the arm, the red star on Bucky’s shoulder flickering in and out. Steve realizes he can’t see the skyline anymore. It tears him up that he can’t see Bucky’s face _or_ the city. It feels so unfair. The injustice of it bears down on him like a subway train, knocking him over, bringing him low, ripping him to—

“Steve?” Natasha mumbles, and Steve’s head snaps up. The space next to him is empty. Of course it is. Who else would be there? Bucky hasn’t had a red star on his shoulder for three years. The arm Shuri made him was a beautiful thing unmarred by shows of allegiance. 

Steve looks at Natasha. She sits upright in her bedroll, eyes squinted closed. Her hair is still white-blonde, but grown out enough for the red to show at the roots, and a strand has damply plastered itself to the side of her face. She looks drowsy and soft. 

“It’s okay, Nat,” Steve says. “Not your shift yet.”

“You were crying.”

Steve touches his face. His fingers come away wet. He hadn’t even noticed. “I’m fine.”

Natasha makes a _hmm_ that manages to be both grumpy and dismissive. “I heard you.”

“It was just a dream,” Steve says.

“Steve.”

He can tell by her tone that she thinks he means her, that he’s brushing off what she heard as a product of her own dreams. A shitty part of him wants to lean into that. She couldn’t prove it wasn’t a dream if he insisted.

Jesus christ. He’s done being shitty to Natasha.

“I nodded off,” he says. “Hell of a lookout, right?”

Natasha sighs. “You want to talk about it?”

“You want to pretend you didn’t hear me?” Steve asks.

“It sounded bad,” Natasha says. 

“It wasn’t. I just… it was just a dream, alright? I’m awake now. I know what’s real.”

Natasha wriggles her way out of her bedroll and walks over to sit next to Steve in the space that Bucky—dream Bucky, nightmare Bucky—had previously occupied. She’s silent for several minutes, long enough that Steve starts to wonder if this is a dream, too, and then she leans against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“I don’t really think Clint’s at the Cincinnati safehouse,” she confesses. “I think he’s dead. Laura and the kids, too.”

Steve exhales slowly. “I’m sorry, Nat. You could be wrong. They might be out of range up there. They could be okay.”

“He was my only family at first. He was the only one who believed in me. Then he let me meet Laura and the kids, and then they were my only family.” Natasha sniffles quietly. “They were all I had other than the work.”

“Hey. Hey, they weren’t your only family,” Steve says, putting an arm around her. “I’m your family, too. I know I’m not much, but I’m here, and we’re family, too.”

Natasha sniffles again, then says, “I hope you’re happy, you jerk. Now we’re both crying!” She punches Steve in the arm, but not with any real force. He leans his head over to rest on top of hers.

“I’m sorry, Nat,” Steve says. “About everything.”

“Me, too,” Natasha says. “I’m sorry about Bucky.”

“Yeah. God, I miss him. He was gone for so long, longer than I ever had him. I feel like I barely got him back, and then everything—” Steve’s voice breaks as he tries to hold back tears. “It all went away so fast. He was gone again so fast, and I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to tell him.”

“He knew, he had to have known,” Natasha says, but Steve shakes his head stubbornly.

“I never said it. I never acted on it. I was waiting for the right time. I wanted him to feel safe again first.”

“He felt like you felt,” Natasha says. When Steve tries to shake his head again, she sit ups and catches his face in her hands, making him look at her. Her eyelashes are wet, her eyes luminous. “I read people for a living, Steve. He felt it. He knew and he felt it, too.”

“We both lost our families,” Steve says. “Everybody but each other.”

“Good thing we’ve got each other, then,” Natasha says.

“You really ready to be stuck with me forever?” Steve asks.

Natasha shrugs. “I guess if I get a better option, I could always trade up.” 

Steve laughs as he rests his forehead against hers. “Who’s the jerk now?” 

“The both of us,” Natasha says. “We can both be the jerk. Jerks are survivors, and I need you to survive.”

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“No, Steve. I mean it.” She stares into his eyes. “I need you to survive. I can’t do this alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve says. “I’m not gonna bail on you.”

“Promise me.”

Steve takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly. “I promise.”

“Good boy,” Natasha says. She releases his face and presses a soft kiss to his forehead. Steve fights the blush that creeps up into his cheeks and fails. 

“You want to sleep more?” he asks her.

Natasha shakes her head. “No. It’s light enough. May as well strike camp and get going.”

Steve looks past Natasha to the sky—to the ghost skyline—beyond the overpass. Without an actual sunrise, the difference between night and day comes down to shades of grey, but this shade is at least somewhat lighter than it was before Steve nodded off. 

“Yeah. We should get moving,” Steve says. “Get to the safehouse outside Cincy and see what we find.”

“We can restock at least, if nothing else.”

“We may find something else, Nat. We may find somebody.”

Natasha shakes her head again, more vigorously this time. “That was last night’s wishful thinking. I was tired. I’m clearer this morning.”

“After your whole two-and-a-half hours?” Steve asks.

“Hey, Mister ‘I got by on two hours during the war’,” Natasha says, poking him in the chest with an index finger, right in the blank spot where the star used to go. “If I say I’m clear, I’m clear.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Steve barks, snapping his hand up into a salute. Natasha’s face scrunches briefly, and then she lets out an honest-to-god giggle. Steve musters up a good imitation of a ‘shocked and appalled’ look for her. She swats at him. 

“Ugh, Rogers. Pack your shit up,” she says, still fighting the grin threatening to take over her face. 

They strike camp, eating gritty-tasting protein bars as they fold up their bedrolls and break down the camp stove. Somewhere in the bleak grey of pre-dawn, a lone bird trills a mournful réveille. It echoes through the underpass and no other birds pick up the song in response. Steve whistles back a few notes, but the bird doesn’t continue. With their packs on their back, and after a quick consultation of Natasha’s atlas, the two travelers head west.

As they cross the border from Pennsylvania into Ohio, things briefly seem to improve. The sun doesn’t break through the clouds and the occasional gust of summer snow blows down on them, but Steve starts seeing signs of other life besides the two of them. A doe and two young fawns, their backs still spotted, sprint across the highway. A flock of birds—grackles, Natasha says—chase after an irate-looking hawk, who has a mouse or vole, some kind of small mammal, in its talons. Steve even hears a dog bark in the distance, answered by a human shout. Natasha picks up her pace, and while part of Steve wants to find these other people, these other survivors, the part that remembers _last time_ increases his speed along with Nat’s.

When they near Columbus, however, signs of life take an abrupt downturn. No more birds, no deer, no dogs. Even the gentle summertime hum of insects fades. The trees immediately south of Cleveland are bare, including the evergreens, as though some strong wind stripped them of their foliage. The highway becomes clogged with cars, dead like the Quinjet was dead after the New York blast. Most of the cars are abandoned, but a few still have passengers strapped inside, as lifeless as the vehicles they clung to. Boils and blisters cover their reddened skin. Their faces are, to a one, twisted in horror or agony. New York wasn’t the only target.

“Should we check for survivors?” Steve asks, while they wind their way through and sometimes over the tightly-packed cars. Natasha shakes her head.

“These people have been here for days,” she says. “They were probably hit the same time as New York. If they survived the blast, they didn’t make it through the aftermath.”

Steve turns his head away from the bodies, suddenly thankful for the unseasonable cold. They’re spared the worst of the smell, at least. A few of the cars have luggage and other personal belongings tossed haphazardly into the back seats or rear compartments, but most of the cars are empty save for their dead occupants. Steve thinks they must have had at least a short window between the New York blast and the one these people tried to flee, enough time for some to pack and others to just jump in their car and go, trying to distance themselves from their own city.

“You think it hit Columbus?” Steve asks, incredulous. Cincinnati, at least, seems like a real city. It has major league sports teams. He could understand a rogue nation or terrorist cell with a moderate knowledge of U.S. geography targeting Cincinnati. Columbus, however, may be the capital of Ohio, but Steve would be hard pressed to recall a single fact about the city. Who would go to the trouble to bomb Columbus, Ohio? 

“I think we don’t know enough about what _it_ is to know what targets they might have gone after, whoever _they_ even are,” Natasha says. “It might not be intentional. It could be something like an asteroid breaking up in orbit, a series of missile misfires, a religious cult with access to alien tech.” She shakes her head. “We can’t know. We might not ever know for sure, depending on how far-reaching this is.”

“So this might all be pointless?” Steve asks, stopping in his tracks.

Natasha continues another few yards before noticing Steve isn’t with her anymore. She stops and turns back to him. Her face has settled into blankness, her eyebrows straight lines on her pale forehead. She stares at Steve for several moments before saying anything.

When she does speak, all she says is, “Staying alive is the point.”

“How do we know this is keeping us alive?” Steve asks. “We’re walking through God only knows how much radiation. I don’t know how radiation affects me, but this can’t be good for you. You’re going to get sick, and for what?”

“What else do you propose we do, Steve?” Natasha demands. Her blank face can’t hold; she’s properly angry now, red points coloring her cheeks. “Pick some place nice to lie down and die?”

“I’m just saying that if there isn’t anywhere better, maybe we should backtrack to someplace that’s at least decent. Someplace that still has something alive in it!”

Natasha’s whole face flushes red. “But for how long? How long until fallout or nuclear winter or whatever this is,” she gestures furiously up at the sky, “destroys that, too? I’m looking at a bigger picture. I’m looking for information, so we can figure out what comes next.”

“What if nothing comes next, Nat? What if this is it? What if it’s city after city after city?” Steve asks.

“Then we continue!” Natasha says angrily. “We keep going because we can, because someone has to.”

“And if you and me are the only people still alive in a month? A year? Do we stand vigil over seven billion dead until we finally get sick and keel over, too?”

Natasha’s expression is murderous. “I expected better from you.”

“Yeah, and I expected I’d get to live out my days in Brooklyn with Bucky. Pick up a hobby, maybe. Get a dog. Go to some baseball games,” Steve says.

“Whereas I didn’t lose anything important, right?” she says. “I don’t have friends or hobbies or fucking _baseball_ , so it’s fine for me to keep on and okay for you to give up, because you lost so much more than me!”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then maybe you should listen to yourself, because that’s what it sounds like.”

“Nat,” Steve says.

“No,” Natasha says sharply, turning back towards their route and storming off. She’s smaller than he is, but more agile and better suited to the packed maze of cars, and he has to scramble to catch up to her.

“Jesus, Nat, will you just listen to me?” he asks.

“Why don’t you just go back to New York? Find yourself a pile of rubble you feel particularly nostalgic about,” Natasha says without slowing down. “Curl up in it and die if that’s what you want.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You said we were family!” Natasha shouts, wheeling on him. “You said you wouldn’t bail on me, or was I dreaming when I heard that?”

“I’m not bailing. I’m just trying to see home plate here. How far do we go? How long do we keep looking?” Steve asks. 

“Until we find answers,” Natasha says.

“And if we don’t?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“I don’t want you to die on that bridge, Nat!” Steve says. “I just want some kind of a plan, something we can fall back on if things look like they’re pointing too far south. I’m not saying give up. I’m saying be smart.”

“I’m being smart,” Natasha says. “That’s why we’re still going to Cincinnati. We hit the safehouse first, then we worry about the next step. We can’t plan past that until we know what we’ll find. People, supplies, information – any of that could affect what we do next.”

“Okay. You’re right. You’re completely right,” Steve says.

“Don’t patronize me, Rogers,” Natasha says, scowling. 

“I’m not. I swear,” Steve says, holding up both hands in surrender. “You’re right, we have to get to the safehouse before we make any decisions.”

“The rest of the team might be there. Wanda, Bruce, the kid. Maybe even Sam or Tony.”

“Maybe,” Steve says. He doesn’t really believe they will, but he doesn’t think Natasha believes that, either. They’ve been playing this game since Port Jersey: one of them hopeful, the other grimly realistic, trading the roles of optimist and doomsayer back and forth like a hot potato. Maybe having something to disagree about is motivation enough to keep going, at least for now, to live to swap opinions another day.

“So?” Natasha says.

“So what?” 

“So let’s keep moving, soldier. I don’t want to spend another night in Ohio.”

Steve laughs and shakes his head. “Nobody wants that, Nat. I mean, it’s _Ohio_.”

Natasha shoots him a grin as she starts walking again. “Aww. Give America’s heartland a chance, Steve. You’re _their_ Captain, too.”

“Oh, you’re going down for that one, Romanoff,” Steve says, suddenly sprinting at her. Natasha lets out a little squeal and runs away from him, laughing and effortlessly dodging cars that Steve has to lumber past or over. She gains a few yards on him before they reach a clear patch of highway. Steve hits a dead run and catches up to her in seconds, grabbing her by the waist with one arm and swinging her around. She dangles over Steve’s arm, red-faced and still laughing, weighing almost nothing.

“Put me down, you ass!” she finally demands, kicking her legs. 

“Nope,” Steve says, continuing to walk. “I’m carrying you to Kentucky.”

“I’m an internationally renowned assassin. Show some respect!” Natasha says. She kicks her legs again, not enough to unbalance him, but enough to jostle him a bit.

“You’re a carry-on bag,” Steve tells her.

“You’re the worst!”

“Yeah, and you’re another!”

“Ugh!” Natasha exclaims, suddenly going limp. She’s significantly heavier as dead weight, though not actually heavy enough to slow Steve down. He gently sets her back on her feet anyway, for the sake of her dignity.

“Lay off the MREs, Nat, geez,” Steve says. “Those things’ve gotta last!”

“I ate five of them while you were sleeping,” Natasha says.

“Well, don’t blame me when you shit a brick,” Steve warns.

“Steve!” Natasha says in faux shock. “Language.”

“Never gonna live that down,” Steve mutters. “One time. _One_ goddamn time.”

“Such a good Catholic boy,” Natasha says.

“A literal brick, Nat.”

“Internationally renowned assassins don’t shit, Steven. We exhale all waste products as carbon dioxide.”

“I’m sure that’ll help the… whatever this weather is,” Steve says, gesturing at the grey sky.

“Nuclear winter? Meteoric chill?” Natasha suggests. “EMP–related snow?”

“Whatever it is, it ain’t good,” Steve says. 

“The safe house should have cold weather gear,” Natasha says.

“I just hope the safe house is still standing at this point.”

“I hope the safe house has a real cot.”

Steve laughs a little as they walk. “Me and Buck used to play that game.”

“Oh?” Natasha asks, her tone carefully incurious. “What game?”

“The ‘what I’m hoping for’ game,” Steve explains. “During the war it was mostly a hot bath or a hot meal.”

“Not for the war to be over?”

Steve shakes his head. “Nah. Too big. ‘What I’m hoping for’ is a low stakes game. Before the war, I usually went with a hotdog.”

A smile briefly touches the corners of Natasha’s mouth. “And Bucky?”

“Oh, he was always after an extra.”

“An extra?”

“Yeah.” Steve nods. “Extra hour of sleep, extra spin with a dame on the dance floor, extra hour in the day.”

“But not you,” Natasha says.

“Not me,” Steve agrees.

“Why no extra for Steve Rogers circa 1943?” she asks, and Steve shrugs.

“Day was already plenty long for me, I guess. I had a hard enough time making it through the twenty-four we had as it was. If you’d’a tacked on another hour…” He shakes his head again. “Besides, Steve Rogers circa 1943 didn’t even get _one_ dance, let alone an extra.”

“See, I’ve heard that story second-hand before, but I never believed it,” Natasha says. 

“You must’ve missed the pre-serum pictures, then,” Steve says.

“No, I saw them,” Natasha says, without any additional commentary. Steve waits for a few beats to see of she’ll continue, but she doesn’t.

“Anyway,” Steve says. “You’re hoping for a cot.”

“And you’re hoping for a building to hold that cot.”

“Wouldn’t turn down a hot bath or a hot meal, neither.”

Natasha’s mouth makes the barely-a-smile again. “But no hot _dog_?”

“Hey, that falls under ‘hot meal’,” Steve says. “My standards aren’t exactly high.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Natasha says. She makes it sound like a promise, enough so that Steve thinks the safehouse has no other option but to be there or risk making Nat mad. And who would want to dare that?

They fall into comfortable silence and a quick, but sustainable pace for both of them. As they reach the city limits of Columbus, their fears about it being the site of another hit seem to be confirmed. Trees, billboards, and bridges—but not the Brooklyn Bridge, still laid out perfectly straight on Steve’s retinas—curl away from the city, wood and metal alike twisted and gnarled into desperate, clawing hands. Flattened cars press into the sides of slumping buildings. The effect is exactly like what little they saw outside of New York, like the city was the nexus of some massive explosion. Their footfalls are the only sound, echoing eerily along the interstate corridor, making Steve and Natasha sound like a dozen people marching. Thick ash and dingy snow settles on their shoulders and on the concrete divider between the north and southbound lanes. 

The highway takes them around Columbus, not through it, and once they’ve passed it, they pick up the pace. They jog south for hours, Steve matching his speed to Natasha’s shorter strides. An hour south of Columbus, a flock of birds fly over them, swirling in confused spirals. By the outskirts of Cincinnati, even Steve feels winded, and Natasha looks half dead on her feet. 

Cars choke the interstate leading into Cincinnati. Both sets of lanes have cars pointing southbound. Without power, there’s no way to tell if the digital marquees over the road had directed the drivers to change course or if they decided it on their own. Steve supposes it no longer matters. Many of the cars were abandoned, but others contain bodies resembling the ones they saw outside of Cleveland. 

“Almost there,” Natasha says through clenched teeth. She’s clearly running on reserves, both physically and mentally, but nothing Steve could do for her now would be a welcomed gesture. Instead he just nods and lets her find their path between and over the vehicles. I–71, their route since Cleveland, merges with I–75, and the conjoined highways funnel them towards the double-decker Brent Spence Bridge leading out of the city and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. 

“How far across the border is the safe house?” Steve asks. 

“Town called Florence, south of the airport,” Natasha says. “Not far.”

At the end of the bridge, they pause. Southbound, they’re on the top level, cars packed in tightly. The bridge is long enough and has just enough curve that Steve can’t clearly see the far end, the Kentucky end. Natasha unholsters her sidearm, a precaution she hasn’t taken for a few days now. Steve instinctively checks for his shield. Together, they begin clambering over the interlocking vehicles, sliding across hoods. Steve lands poorly on a late model Honda Civic and the windshield shatters beneath him, spraying safety glass fragments in at the bloated body of the driver. He pulls his leg free from the window and tries not to look back. 

A jackknifed 18-wheeler blocks the northbound lanes at the far end of the bridge. Its trailer, the tanker variety, has punched a hole through the bridge’s sidewall between two of the bridge’s massive metal girders. The tank hangs precariously over the crumbling concrete edge, its back wheels over empty air, the Ohio River churning below. Steve notices movement around the truck, but his brain can’t resolve it into meaning at first, not until Natasha inhales sharply. People. The movement is _people_ , and they’ve seen so few living humans that Steve briefly forgot how they moved. 

Unlike in their one prior encounter with other humans—the one that ended with brains on Steve’s boot—these people don’t slink out of the darkness to attack them. They stand in a loose formation across the bridge, all of them wearing bandanas tied around their faces. They’re armed with a mix of firearms and improvised melee weapons, mostly bats. Steve raises one hand in greeting as he and Natasha come to a stop at a safe distance; they can be friendly _and_ cautious.

When none of the people blocking the bridge move, Steve calls out, “We’re just passing through. Let us by and we’ll be on our way.”

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” says a tall woman with a deep voice and a pale blond braid hanging over her shoulder like the ice princess in the Disney movie. “We’re gonna take your stuff. Set it down and you can be on your way, just like you want.”

Natasha’s finger twitches on her sidearm, too slight a movement for anyone but Steve to catch. He frowns, putting both his hands up to demonstrate their lack of threat. 

“You see this? You know what it is?” he asks the blonde, turning his upper body to display the shield.

“Yeah. You can leave that, too,” she says.

“I don’t want there to be any trouble. If you recognize the shield, if you know who I am, you know I don’t have any interest in hurting civilians,” Steve says. Natasha inches closer to him in small, slow slides of her booted feet. 

The blonde starts to cough, or so Steve thinks for a few seconds before he realizes it’s actually a hoarse laugh. Her shoulders shake with the force of it, and the rest of her crew shuffle their feet as if they’re uncertain if they’re supposed to join in or not.

“Got bad news for you, Cap,” the blonde says. “No such thing as civilians anymore.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” Natasha says under her breath.

“Yeah. Little theatrical,” Steve mutters back to her.

“Probably not the first people she’s stopped,” Nat says.

“Probably going to be the last, though,” Steve says.

“Well?” the blonde asks. “Did you and your friend decide you’d like to see this play out in the only way where nobody dies?”

“Oh she’s totally going to kill us,” Natasha whispers.

“We’ll have those packs, the shield, little lady’s gun.” The blonde points her bat at Natasha. 

“She’s totally going to try,” Steve agrees quietly. 

“We could double back, cross at another bridge to the east or west,” Natasha says. “This isn’t the only way out of the city.”

“Maybe not, but it’s the straightest shot, isn’t it?” Steve asks, and Natasha nods. “And we don’t know if they’ve got people on the other bridges. Besides, never thought much of bullies, and that hasn’t changed, end of the world or not.” He waits for Natasha’s head-tilt of assent, then turns his attention back to the blonde, yelling, “Sorry, but no deal. My friend and I are coming through now, and if you’re smart, you’ll stand down.”

The blonde lifts her bat into the air, signaling her crew to break into a dramatic chorus of war whoops. Natasha sighs.

“It hasn’t even been two weeks, and the idiots are already devolving into _Mad Max_ ,” she says.

“I never saw that movie. Movies?” Steve says, reaching behind his back for the shield. 

“Newest one’s the best one. We’ll have to watch it if we ever get the lights back on,” Natasha says. “On my signal?”

Steve nods, the bridge guardians whoop, and the blonde is cut in half by the silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge. Then Natasha shouts “now!” and dives to the right, as Steve brings the shield forward. He runs straight ahead, barreling into the blonde before any of her posse has a chance to fire.

She’s big, much bigger than his initial assessment, and solid as brick. The shield slams into her gut, knocking the wind out of her in an audible “oof!” She doesn’t drop, though, just grunts a little as she squares up again, aiming an elbow into Steve’s rib cage. He almost rolls out of the way, but she manages to tip off his floating rib, sending a shock through him. Steve hunches, sweeps a leg out to throw her off her balance, turtles under the shield. Bullets ping off it from another member of the bridge crew, but the blonde doesn’t flinch. 

Steve spares a glance over his shoulder at Natasha, who has at least three people engaged in an ugly mix of close-quarters combat and a firefight. Blood trickles down her forehead, but that doesn’t mean anything dire, necessarily; Steve knows better than anyone how head wounds bleed. Natasha fires her sidearm rapidly four times, and two of her three opponents drop.

Confident that Natasha is taking care of herself, Steve returns his full focus to the blonde. The gunfire dies down, and Steve risks crowding the woman, using the shield to keep her within striking range. They exchange blows: fist to face, shield to collarbone, baseball bat to thigh, another fist to face, to neck, to face again, to sternum. The blonde drops to her knees, coughing and choking, in time for someone to squeeze off a few rounds over her. One ricochets off the shield, another whizzes by his ear, but the third goes into his shoulder. Even as Steve staggers, he checks the wound – through-and-through, the best way to get shot, if there’s no avoiding being shot. He slams the shield into the blonde’s face and she crumples on the dusty concrete.

The shield goes up again, Steve turning to look for Natasha just in time to see her knocked into the concrete wall of the bridge, right at the edge of the gaping hole the tanker punched through it. At first, she’s fine, holding on to the wall, then the concrete crumbles in her hands and she falls back, back, back through the hole.

“Nat!” Steve shouts, sprinting towards her.

“I’m okay!” she calls back. He’s close enough now to see she caught the wheel well of the tanker on her way through the hole. Both hands grip the thin lip of metal, her sidearm gone, probably in the river. 

“Just hang on,” Steve yells to her. 

“That’s the plan,” she yells back, but her hands are both painted red with blood. The wheel well edge must be sharp. Blood runs down her arms, and her grip slips ever so slightly.

“I’m gonna get you,” Steve says in a panic. Two more of the bridge crew run at him. He bats them aside with the shield. Natasha is his only priority.

“Steve?” Natasha actually sounds _scared_ now. As Steve watches, she loses her grip with her left hand, dangling over the churning Ohio from just the fingertips of her right hand. He runs faster, smashing the face of Natasha’s last attacker to get to the edge of the bridge. 

Steve reaches for her. He reaches, and the distance telescopes out, through both time and space, and he’s reaching, eternally reaching, if he can just grab Bucky— no, Natasha, Natasha’s hand! He anchors himself with the shield and stretches his arm as far as he can. 

With barely a gasp, Natasha slips. She loses her remaining grip and plummets down into the brown water of the river below. Steve freezes, stuck in horrible overlapping moments of Bucky falling from the train and Natasha falling from the bridge, but then his brain kicks in again. He hooks the shield onto his back and jumps, feet first, off the bridge into the water.

The river is warm, but the current is surprisingly strong, and Steve has to fight his way to the surface. Again and again, the river pulls him down, and every time, he swims back up to look for Natasha. He sees churning water, debris, more water. Finally, he thinks he spots her, a black and white splotch on the brown riverbank, and through sheer force of will, he fights the current and makes it to shore. He lies on the mud next to her, him on his back, her on her side facing him, both of them coughing.

“Nat,” Steve says, dragging himself closer. The wound in his shoulder screams at him, cold and angry. He puts one hand on her side, patting it. “Nat, Natasha?”

Natasha curls up on herself and spasms, coughs again, and then vomits a gout of river water. She grimaces, coughing up more water before weakly wiping her mouth with the back of one torn, bleeding hand. 

“Sorry,” Natasha croaks.

Steve turns his head to make eye contact with her. Her eyes are red and glassy. Water trickles out her nose. She’s alive, beautifully alive.

“Jesus, Nat,” Steve says, turning his face back towards the grey sky. The upper points of the Brooklyn Bridge fizzle into the clouds, no longer sharp and stark; his retinas must be healing.

After a few too many beats pass in silence, Natasha says, “At least tell me we’re on the right side of the river.”

Steve sits up, stifling a groan. He presses a hand to his injured shoulder as he looks up and down the river. He’s shocked by how far from the bridge they traveled in what could only have been a matter of seconds, but they do at least appear to be on the correct side of the river.

“Good news,” Steve says. “We’re in Kentucky.”

Natasha struggles upright. “Shit.”

“I thought Kentucky was a good thing,” Steve says. Natasha shakes her head.

“I lost my pack,” she says. “In the fall or in the river, not sure which.”

“We can restock at the safehouse,” Steve says.

“If it’s still there.”

“It will be.”

“If it’s still _stocked_.”

“Jeez, Nat. C’mon. It will be.”

“Such a Pollyanna sometimes, Rogers,” Natasha say. She balls up her fist and makes like she’s going to slug Steve in the shoulder, but she loses steam on the way and just ends up resting her hand on his arm instead. He puts one of his hands over hers, and they both lie back against the bank again.

“Thought I’d lost you,” Steve says.

Natasha smiles weakly. “Yeah, I thought I— Steve.” She lifts her hand from his arm, and it comes away bloodier. “You’re bleeding.”

“You, too,” Steve says, nodding at her hands.

“You got shot, didn’t you?” Natasha demands.

“Just a little.”

“You complete ass!”

“Hey, we both survived it, didn’t we?” Steve asks. Natasha doesn’t answer, just makes one of her frustrated noises and rolls towards him. Her small arms wrap around him as best they can, and after a moment, Steve puts his arms around her, too. They’re both soaking wet and bleeding on a muddy riverbank in the chill maybe-nuclear-winter air, a rock digging its sharp point into Steve’s right shoulder blade, but he feels alive like he hasn’t in days.

Everything goes a little wobbly at the edges as Steve’s hand cups Natasha’s face, tilting it up. He crushes her lips under his. Her mouth tastes slightly sour, like river water traveling two directions, like he images he must taste, too, but it’s also soft and hot. He’s kissed so few people in his life, one of them her, but it wasn’t anything like this. Even his brief, sweet kiss with Peggy didn’t feel like this. It held a similar urgency, but it was a farewell, while this is a fierce hello, an affirmation that he’s alive, she’s alive, that despite it all they are both vital living creatures, breathing the tainted air while their wounded hearts pump blood through their bodies. He threads his fingers through her wet hair as they pull apart, keeping her close.

“Well, that was weird,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, it was, a little,” Steve says.

“I’m not talking about it until we get to the safehouse,” Natasha says.

Steve nods. “Probably for the best.”

“And fuck those bridge trolls!” she adds.

“Yeah, fuck ’em,” he agrees, which makes Natasha smile.

Together, they scramble up the sloped bank of the Ohio River and make their way properly onto Kentucky soil. Steve sees the interstate to the left, but a quickly-exchanged glance with Natasha confirms that they’ll stay to the east of it for now. He doesn’t see or hear any signs of the remaining bridge trolls. Maybe they learned their lesson. More likely, they’re regrouping to harass the next travelers, if more travelers even exist. 

Their pace this time is slower and more cautious. Steve can’t stop looking over his shoulder, though Natasha just stares determinedly ahead, as goal-oriented as ever, her breath becoming a wisp of steam in the dropping temperature and her injured hands clenched into tight fists. There’s no discussion of stopping to patch themselves up. The unplanned detour into the river kept them on the road closer to dark than planned. Steve’s bullet wound throbs as they finally climb over the concrete guard wall and onto the interstate. He presses one palm to his shoulder and squints up at the water tower proclaiming “FLORENCE Y’ALL” in black letters taller than the shadowy skyscrapers floating between them.

“This must be the place,” Steve says, earning himself a halfhearted eye roll from Natasha. 

“Next exit,” she says. “At least the traffic’s not bad.” She nods at the empty lanes, both northbound and southbound. 

Steve follows Natasha to the next exit ramp, then up and down a series of short roads and sharp turns. She could be making sure they weren’t followed, but Steve would equally believe the streets in this part of the country are that twisted and convoluted. Some part of him has always felt like any place without a proper grid layout may as well be wilderness.

“That one,” Natasha finally says, stopping in front of a nondescript ranch that was probably built in the ’50s. Other than having shutters painted a particularly uncomfortable shade of green, the house doesn’t stand out from its neighbors. Somehow, Steve had expected the safe house to be somewhere unusual, like in a hidden chamber under a gas station or up in the FLORENCE Y’ALL water tower, not in a shabby ranch with a sagging door over its single car garage.

“Here?” Steve asks, just in case he got it wrong.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, wandering into the front yard and leaning over to look at a line of smooth river stones marking out a section along the house’s left side. The shape and location suggest a garden bed, though the lack of any plants other than weeds belies that somewhat. Natasha lifts a seemingly random stone and fishes around in the soil underneath it with thumb and forefinger. She comes up with a key.

“The key to the safehouse was under a rock?” Steve asks incredulously. 

Natasha shrugs. “Seems like it.”

“Life as a spy must be a lot less glamorous than I imagined.”

“That’s why you make a better soldier than a spy,” Natasha says, giving him a wry smile. 

She unlocks the door and they enter a dusty living room, locking up behind themselves once they’re in. Steve follows her past a plaid chair and a truly hideous floral print sofa and into a narrow hallway. He looks through doorways into generic-looking bedrooms, feeling slightly disappointed until he realizes the interior dimensions are all wrong. He walks backwards down the hall and looks at the living room, then forward to look into the bedrooms, then back again. Natasha lets him repeat that a few times, waiting patiently.

“This house is too small inside,” Steve says.

“Thought you might pick up on that.” Natasha slides a framed print of an uninspired pastoral scene to the side, uncovering an inset handle, which she grasps and twists clockwise. Two wall panels suddenly separate to reveal a tightly spiraling staircase, its metal steps leading down into darkness. Natasha leans into the space and calls out, “Tanager.” She listens intently, but nobody answers, so she starts down the stairs, flicking on the flashlight somehow still clipped to her belt as she goes.

Steve follows her, feeling much too large for the space, and fighting back a flashing slideshow of memories—trapped in a mop closet at school, the latch on Erskine’s chamber clamping shut, ice pressing in at him from all sides—and he hunches low enough to not bang his head. The stairs spiral down, down, ridiculously down, until finally depositing them in a large, dark room. Natasha moves her flashlight, sending a beam of light from right to left, then left to right, pausing in corners and doorways. She must finally be satisfied, because her posture relaxes and she moves forward into the room, turning on touch-lights Steve hadn’t even noticed.

“Power?” he asks, but Natasha shakes her head.

“Batteries,” she says. “Water heater and stove should be gas, though, so we can shower, at least.”

Not relaxed, Steve realizes. That’s not what the drop of her shoulders meant. _Disappointed._ She had hoped she’d find someone else here, and those hopes had just been dashed.

“Tanager?” Steve asks, hoping to provide a brief distraction.

“Codename,” Natasha says. “It was Laura’s idea. She says I spent too much time with a hawk and a falcon to not have a bird name, too, and she picked tanager.”

“Like a scarlet tanager?” Steve guesses.

Natasha nods. “Maybe a little on the nose, but better than Clint and the kids’ suggestions.”

“No way are we moving on until you tell me those,” Steve says, and Natasha grimaces slightly.

“Turkey, Big Bird, Hawkeye Two, and Titmouse.”

“Please tell me—”

“Nope. Clint’s was Hawkeye Two. Nathaniel’s a surprisingly creative namer for his age,” Natasha says. 

“Tanager sounds great,” Steve says. “Now I’m a little jealous I don’t have a bird codename.”

“I’m feeling generous, so I’ll let you be Big Bird,” Natasha says.

With the touch-lights on, the room is now obviously at least as large as the house above it, with a bathroom at one end and a closed door Steve suspects is to a supply room at the other end. The furnishings are spartan, a dozen camp cots made more luxurious with real pillows and thick woolen blankets, and a simple wooden table with chairs. Without further discussion, Natasha claims a cot, kicking her boots off underneath it, and disappears into the bathroom. The water starts and after a few minutes, she calls out, “It’s hot!” 

Steve puts his pack on the cot next to Natasha’s, then second guesses himself and moves it down a few – his instincts want to continue the close proximity for defense, but he also understands she may want a little breathing room from him after the whole kiss debacle. Steve putters around the kitchenette, heating canned soup from the cupboard on the gas range. When Natasha emerges from the shower, clothed in a clean black tank top and grey sweatpants, hair wrapped in a towel, she has a hot bowl of soup waiting for her, another bowl filled with canned fruit cocktail beside it.

“The Ritz-Carlton it ain’t,” Steve says, gesturing to the spread, “but we’ve got hot food and decent beds.”

“And hot showers,” Natasha says. 

“Speaking of…”

“Go!” Natasha says, shooing him in the direction of the bathroom. 

The bathroom itself is an underwhelming affair, just a toilet, pedestal sink, and narrow white shower stall lit by a battery-powered touch light on the wall, but the water is hot enough to steam when Steve turns on the shower. He peels off his clothes, the fabric stiff with sweat, blood, and muddy river water. He wipes the steam away from the bathroom’s small mirror and leans in close to get a better look at his bullet wound. The edges are greyish-brown, like old stew meat left in the ice chest too long. The fluid seeping from the wounds—both entrance and exit—is cloudy and smells faintly off. Still, Steve has healed from worse, and the Ohio wasn’t the first filthy river he’s fallen into with open wounds, so he steps into the shower and grits his teeth as hot water hits raw flesh. 

Steve takes his time in the shower, using the bar of soap on the corner shelf to wash his body and his hair, including the week’s worth of beard he’s regrown since the flash. They may find razors somewhere in the safehouse, but Steve isn’t counting on it, so he mentally notes to be sure their portable med kit has scissors so he can at least trim his beard later down the road. 

He remains under the spray of water long past the point his shower at home would have gone cold, then he dries off and picks up his clothes, grimacing at the feel and smell of them. Remembering Natasha’s fresh clothing, Steve wraps the towel around his waist and turns the shower back on, rinsing out his black fatigues until the water runs clear. He wrings them out and hangs them over the curtain rod, hoping they’ll be dry by morning.

It doesn’t occur to Steve to be self-conscious about wearing only a towel as he steps out of the bathroom. His time in the army doesn’t feel that long ago. Natasha raises one perfect eyebrow at him, though, and gives him an appraising look that makes him flush down his neck and chest.

All Natasha says is, “That wound isn’t looking so hot.”

Noting that Natasha has wrapped a wad of paper towels around the handle of her spoon, but is still holding it gingerly, Steve replies, “Right back at you.”

“They’re clean,” Natasha says. “I just can’t wrap them myself.”

“There clothes here that’ll fit me?” Steve asks. 

“Cabinet next to the bathroom,” Natasha says. Steve hadn’t even noticed it, but sees she’s right – a narrow cabinet beside the bathroom door has a variety of tanks, undershirts, sweats, and black BDUs. He finds a shirt and pair of sweats that’ll fit him more or less and lets his towel drop, pulling the clothes on. If Natasha looks, she looks; for his part, Steve doesn’t look to see if she is.

Dressed and decent, Steve heads straight for the supply closet. Inside, by the door, he finds a much larger field medical kit than the one in his pack. He carries the kit back to the table and sits next to Natasha and her empty bowls, her spoon and its bloody napkins resting on the table.

“How’s the soup?” he asks.

“Good,” she answers. “The fruit was nice, too. Thanks for that.”

“Treat ourselves while we can, right?” Steve says. Natasha’s laugh sounds tired and strained. He reaches for her hands. She startles at first, reflexively, but then lets him take them. “These don’t look so hot.”

“See, Rogers? That right there is why you can’t get a date. You can’t tell a girl she’s not hot.” Natasha seems to be striving for humor, but doesn’t quite hit the mark. Her hands obviously hurt. Steve rests them on his leg and unzips the med kit and sets out the supplies he needs.

First, Steve gently cleans the wounds with disinfectant swabs, forcing himself to keep going as Natasha winces. Her cuts are deep, but they don’t have the greyish tinge of Steve’s bullet wounds. 

“These could stand stitches,” Steve tells her.

“I figured as much,” Natasha says, resigned. “Just do it fast.”

“They have a topical anesthetic ointment.”

“It’s not the pain. It’s the holding still.”

Steve nods. “Okay. I’ll go as fast as I can.” He dabs a little ointment over her cuts, making her hiss—the lidocaine itself stings before it numbs—then he opens a sterile needle and sutures and goes to work on her hands, using as few stitches as he can to close the wounds. Natasha pales, but doesn’t flinch or complain. When Steve is done, he slathers an antibiotic cream over both of her palms before bandaging them up tightly. Before letting go of her hands, he flips them over and presses a soft kiss to her knuckles.

“Anybody ever tell you that you have excellent bedside manner?” Natasha asks. 

Steve shrugs. “My ma was a nurse.”

“So I’ve read.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Steve asks as he releases Natasha’s hands.

Natasha’s eyebrows lift a little in genuine curiosity. “What’s funny?”

“How you know so much about me, but I barely know anything about you,” Steve says. “You’re one of my closest friends—” Natasha blushes a little, looks pleased and slightly embarrassed about being pleased. “But I know more about Clint or Wanda than I do about you. Real stuff, I mean. True stuff.”

“I don’t like to share that stuff. It’s ugly,” Natasha says. 

“But Clint knows,” Steve says. Not a question.

Natasha sighs softly. “I’m sure Sam knows plenty of stuff about you that I don’t.”

“I doubt it,” Steve says. Oh Sam. He gives himself permission to ache for Sam, present location: parts unknown. 

“And what he knows, you told him. He didn’t have to dig.”

“Neither did you. You could have asked.”

“Yeah, Cap, you’re so forthcoming,” Natasha says, and Steve frowns at her.

“Hey, don’t do that. Don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t have shared, if you’d asked instead of looking at my files,” Steve says.

“To be fair, they’re _really_ good files.”

“Nat,” Steve says, his frown deepening.

“I’m just saying! They have psych evals, timelines, some really hot dish on your thing with Peggy Carter—”

“Show some respect!”

“ _Agent_ Carter, then,” Natasha says. “Did you know the Red Room tried to have her killed for over a decade? They finally gave up after losing too many Widows.”

“That’s my girl,” Steve says proudly. Peg was a fighter to the very end. A scrapper.

“I would’ve loved to have met her in her heyday. I mean, Sharon’s no joke, but—”

Steve cuts her off with a nod. “Yeah, Peg was something else.”

“Did she know about you and Bucky?” Natasha asks. Steve shakes his head.

“Not much to know. Just feelings, feelings neither of us acted on,” Steve says.

“But you were going to.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. “That was the plan.”

“Would you be jealous if I told you I acted on it? Back in the day, when the KGB owned us both?” Natasha asks. She looks at Steve hard, like a challenge.

“I knew the Odessa story wasn’t the whole story,” Steve admits.

“And?”

“Can’t find it in me to begrudge either of you.”

“God, you’re good. How’d Tony put it once? ‘Too good for this world…’?”

“‘Because it just makes the rest of us look bad’,” Steve finishes. “Yeah. That’s Tony for you.”

“You think he made it?” Natasha asks.

“I think I don’t want to think about it,” Steve says. “Tell me more about Bucky. I won’t be jealous, I promise.”

“I never knew if he remembered me time to time. He’d say he did, but he was a hell of a liar,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, he was,” Steve says fondly.

“He always kissed the same, though. Like he was looking for air and I was the only source.”

“Mmm. Yeah, sounds like him. He was real handsy, too, wasn’t he.”

“Oh yes. On my back, my hips, sliding up my thighs…” Natasha starts breathing more heavily as she recounts it, and Steve has to consciously focus on not getting hard as she talks.

“He loved the dames,” Steve says. Natasha shakes her head, though.

“No, I think he just loved being touched. Wanted. Feeling human.”

“Feeling alive,” Steve supplies.

“Exactly,” Natasha says. “When he shot me…”

“Bye bye bikinis,” Steve says.

“Bye bye to a lot of things,” she answers.

“Show me again,” Steve says. “Show me where he shot you.”

With her bandaged hands, Natasha slowly draws up the hem of her tank top to reveal the puckered scar. 

“Not exactly a love bite,” Natasha says.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Steve says. He reaches out and, after Natasha’s nod, runs a thumb over the scar. “Didn’t hit any major organs. You walked away from it.” He presses his thumb to her scar, certain he can feel her pulse.

“I guess that’s one way to look at it. It hurt, though.”

“Getting shot usually does.”

“Not just physically. It hurt that he did it,” Natasha says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I know that one.”

“Still…”

“Something to remember him by?”

Natasha smiles. “You could say that.”

“Then it’s a beautiful scar,” Steve says, and on impulse, he slides from his chair to the floor in front of her, takes her hips in his hands, and presses his lips to the scar, even more gently than he’d kissed her hands.

“Steve,” Natasha says.

“Yeah, Nat?”

“Is this really something we want to do?” Natasha asks.

“Is it something _you_ want to do?” Steve asks. Natasha nods. “Then yeah. I do.” 

“To feel human,” she says.

“To feel alive,” Steve agrees. He kisses her scar again, gripping her hips tighter, and he swears he can almost taste Bucky there, gunpowder and sweat and pomade.

“Cots,” Natasha gasps.

“Yeah, let’s,” Steve says. He lets her go and follows her over to the cot with her bedroll, but as soon as she’s situated on it, Steve settled beside her, he leans in to kiss her. She tastes sweeter and saltier this time, no doubt from the soup and fruit cocktail, and her mouth is soft and yielding against his. He lets himself surrender to the kiss, putting all his pent up want and need into it, and after a few minutes they both pull away panting.

“This isn’t just some weird secondhand Bucky thing, is it?” Natasha asks.

“A little,” Steve confesses. “Not all. Not even most. Is that alright?”

“Fuck, yes,” Natasha says, diving back in to kiss him. His arms wrap around her. She’s so hot and vital against him. His hands slide up under her tank to cup her breasts, heavy and firm, like he’d imagined Peggy’s would be. Natasha lets out a noise that—Jesus, his head is spinning—echoes off the walls of the bunker, an unselfconscious moan in stereo. 

If the world weren’t ending, had they world enough and time, as it goes, Steve would do this for hours, just kissing, holding, touching. Time is at a premium now, though, and any moment could literally be their last, which means he should ask for what he wants now, give Natasha what she wants now.

“You wanna maybe?” Steve asks, slowly starting to lean her back. Natasha nods her consent and lets him lay her against the cot, Steve over her, braced on elbows and one knee to keep from crushing her.

“Is it okay if I?” Natasha asks, tugging on the bottom hem of Steve’s shirt. He reaches behind himself, grabs a handful of shirt and yanks the whole thing up and over his head before discarding it to the floor. Natasha’s hands wander over his chest, down to his abs, but then one hand slides up to his injured shoulder as she frowns. “This doesn’t look—”

“Doesn’t matter right now, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Steve reassures her. “Super soldier, right?”

“Right,” Natasha says, sounding a little dubious, so Steve kisses her again, kisses the frown away from her mouth, kisses the doubt to quietness, until her face is relaxed and open.

Steve lifts his head enough to look at her face, really look at her, with her large, sad eyes, perky little nose, mouth that always seemed perpetually quirked into a knowing smile. The quirk is gone now, softened into something real and maybe even a little vulnerable. Steve tries to blink away the silhouettes of Brooklyn and Manhattan shivering across her cheeks.

“You really are one of my closest friends,” Steve says to her. “One of the best, my best.”

“You, too,” Natasha says. “I don’t trust a lot of people, but you, you I trust.”

“I trust you, too. If I had to pick anybody to do this with—”

“You’d pick him,” Natasha insists, but Steve shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t have to pick him. He’s like a limb, he’d just _be_ there, if it were up to me. No picking required. You, though? I’d pick you. I’d choose you over all the rest of them.”

“I forget how sweet you are, sometimes.”

Steve wolf-grins down at her, all hungry and toothy. “Well, I ain’t all _that_ sweet.”

Natasha laughs, a real, deep-in-the-body laugh. “God, Rogers. You’re just too much.”

“I love you, Nat,” Steve says. “I do. I love you and trust you. That means everything to me. You know that, right? People I love and trust,” he exhales, the breath whistling a little between his teeth, “there’s not that many of you.”

“I love you, too,” Natasha says. “And I trust you more than just about anyone.”

“I’m proud to play second fiddle to Clint,” Steve says, which makes Natasha laugh. As she laughs, Steve works her tank upward, up over her head and off her arms. Her tank joins Steve’s undershirt on the floor.

Natasha pulls him down into another kiss, hooking one of her legs around him and rocking her pelvis up against his. There’s no disguising Steve’s erection pressing against Natasha’s stomach, but she doesn’t seem to mind, and it’s been forever since he’s felt okay about being this close to someone. They’re continuing together, the only souls alive in this world who matter to each other, so why shouldn’t they have this? Why shouldn’t they, for however long it lasts?

Steve nearly loses himself in thought before Natasha drags him back into the here and now by shoving a hand down the back of his pants to grab his ass. He laughs before he can help himself.

“Oh, is this amusing you?” Natasha asks, her mouth pursed up into a little smile.

“God, yes,” Steve answers honestly. “This, the idea of this, it’s so far beyond anything I ever would have thought, it feels… I have to laugh, Nat. How is this real? How is any of it real? Just a few years ago, I fell asleep in the ice in 1945, and now the world’s ended and some hot ticket’s got her hands down my pants. Tell me that’s not a little bit funny.”

“Hilarious,” Natasha says. “Are you going to be able to keep yourself together if I get your pants off?” Steve schools his face as serious as he can get it and nods, to which Natasha smiles and says, “Good,” and promptly pushes his pants down his hips.

After some twisting and bending, Steve manages to get his sweatpants off and turn his attention to removing Natasha’s, lifting up to tug them down. She wriggles out with considerably more grace than he did, her bare legs sliding against his. Steve kisses her mouth again, rougher now that they’re both naked and entwined. Natasha grips him by the hair and gives him a gentle pull downward. He moves slowly, pressing his lips to her neck, her collarbones, kissing each nipple before giving it a soft swipe of his tongue, watching it stiffen. 

Steve kisses her stomach, nudges it with his nose in a few sensitive looking spots to make her laugh. He slides his tongue over the Winter Soldier’s bullet scar, tracing the textured rim of raised scarring around the slightly depressed circular center. He glances up at Natasha, who watches him with an expression that’s both aroused and calculating. He likes it.

Sliding his a hand up to Natasha’s right breast, Steve lets himself move lower, just above the triangle of red hair between her legs. He stops at a scar just above the hairline, old enough to have faded to silvery-white.

“What’s this one from?” Steve asks, lifting his head to look at her just in time to see her turning her head away.

“Laparoscopic hysterectomy,” Natasha says in a flat voice. “They let us keep our ovaries because it was easier than giving us supplemental hormones, but the Red Room’s girls don’t need uteruses.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. Natasha shrugs like it’s no big deal.

“I tried to explain it to Bruce once how it was. What it was like. I told him I felt like a monster.”

“Hey, no,” Steve says in alarm, sitting up, but keeping his hands on her. “That doesn’t make you a monster.”

Natasha shakes her head. “Not that. Not the surgery. Not what they took.”

“What then?” Steve asks.

“It’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t fight them. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t fight. I didn’t run—”

“You were just a girl, a kid,” Steve insists, but Natasha shakes her head more violently.

“But I stayed with them after. I could have left. I could have taken what they taught me and run, hid, but I didn’t. I stayed. I killed for them.” Natasha’s breathing speeds up, and her tone sharpens. “I didn’t stop them from doing it to other girls, either. I helped train those girls, knowing this is what would happen to them, and I _let it happen_ , and I kept on killing for the Red Room, spying for them, fucking for them. That’s what makes me a monster.”

“You stayed alive. You survived them,” Steve says. “That’s not monstrous, not any more than Bucky was. What they did to you— maybe it took you some time, but you got free. You survived long enough to get free.” He bends his head and plants a deliberate kiss on the scar. 

“But I’m changed. They took something from me.”

Steve nods. “I know. I’m sorry, Nat.”

“I never wanted kids, but I would have liked that choice.” Natasha sniffles a little and then smiles down at Steve. “This got messy.”

“Nah,” Steve says. “Apocalypse rules say this can go however it needs to go and everything’s still a-okay.” He kisses the scar again before grinning up at her. “Anyway, you read my file. The Vita-Rays left me—”

“Sterile. I saw.”

“So at least we don’t have to worry about blowing through our condom ration.”

“Yep, you’re a real charmer, Rogers,” Natasha says. 

“I promise I don’t have the clap or nothing,” Steve says, crossing his heart (and hope to die) with his right index finger. Natasha laughs loudly.

“I wasn’t worried about that, but good to know,” she says. “Honestly, Steve, you’re a menace.”

“So I hear,” Steve says. He slides a little lower, half of him hanging off the cot’s narrow mattress, and nudges his nose against Natasha’s inner thighs. Her legs fall open, and he presses his lips to the smooth skin of one thigh, kissing a line up her leg. He can smell her, a warm, slightly musky scent. 

Natasha shifts under him, spreading her legs wider in invitation. What Steve lacks in experience, he trusts he can make up for in enthusiasm. He lightly runs his tongue from the start of her opening and up to her clitoris, tasting her. She’s a little salty, a little sweet, the faintest hint of soap mixed in. He slides his tongue down and back up again, pressing it inside her slightly before returning to her clit. She’s already wet, slick against his lips and tongue. He laps at her clit and then dips the tip of his tongue inside her.

Natasha grabs at his hair, gasping and holding his head in place. Steve continues to work her with his tongue and lips, and maybe he lacks finesse, but Natasha squirms under him, lifting her hips so he can slide his tongue over her and inside her. His erection presses against the edge of the cot, getting harder with every gasp or moan out of her, and from the growing wetness against his mouth. He could do this for hours, lost in the smell and taste of her, but after only a few more minutes, she tugs him upwards by his hair.

Steve braces an arm beside her head, his body hovering over hers, until she hooks one limber leg around his waist and pulls him down. His hips cant forward, and his cock slides into her, both of their breaths catching.

“God,” Natasha says, her head falling back against the pillow, exposing her long neck. Steve would kiss her pale skin there if he could reach. Instead, he rocks back and then into her again in slow, shallow thrusts. She moans and gasps, muttering little words to herself in what sounds like Russian.

“Like this?” Steve asks.

Nat shakes her head, digging her finger into Steve’s back and wrapping her other leg around him. The shift in angle makes him slide in deeper. She’s hot and tight around him, soft and wet. He’d imagined sex plenty of times before, even sex with Natasha—fierce, intelligent, beautiful Natasha—but it wasn’t like this. Fantasy didn’t account for the way sweat makes skin slide against skin, Natasha’s breathy, filthy swearing, how the fear of having lost her and the joy of finding her whole and alive heightened his awareness of her breathing, her pulse thundering under his hands. To be alive, to be with her, inside her, in the face of so much loss and destruction – to _continue_ with her, not alone, not snatched once again from time and the people he loves. 

She had asked if this was about Bucky, and Bucky is a factor who can never be erased from the equation, but Steve wants Natasha just for being Natasha. He wants her nails digging into his back, slicing fine lines down his skin, so he thrusts at the angle she encourages. He wants to see the flush rising in her face, her head thrown back in pleasure, so he rubs a thumb over one of her nipples. He wants the hot grip of her around him, so he calls out her name, panting it, holding it between his teeth to keep from shouting it.

Lest he forget she spent the first half of her life training as a ballerina, she rolls and twists without letting him slip out of her, until she’s on top of him. Steve looks up at her pink cheeks and red mouth, lips parted and eyes half-closed. Natasha rides him in earnest, and all he has to do is hold onto her, thumbs pressed to her hip bones. He lifts his own hips up, thrusting up into her. She plants her bandaged palms flat on his chest and closes her eyes.

“You’re so beautiful,” Steve says. It feels cheesy, and also inadequate. She’s beautiful like a fire is beautiful, dangerous and consuming. 

“Mmm,” is all Natasha says in response. She undulates, a wave of heat and friction, and when Steve releases her hips to rolls her nipples under his thumbs again, she gets even wetter, her muscles rippling around his cock. He hadn’t known this, that he would be able to feel her getting close to orgasm, but he knows that’s what he’s feeling now. She works herself on him, and he touches her and mutters encouraging sounds that don’t quite form real words. He puts a thumb to her clit to rub careful circles. That’s when she lets go.

Natasha cries out when she comes, a surprisingly soft sound, and sinks all the way down on his cock. She flutters around him as he pulls her down against his chest, kissing her face and mouth. After a few moments, she starts moving again, her body still pressed to his. He wraps his arms around her, making little thrusts up into her that she meets each time with a snap of her hips.

She kisses his neck, then tilts her head up to whisper into his ear. “It’s okay, Steve. It’s okay to let go. I want you to.”

She tightens around him, places a soft kiss to his throat, and just like that, he’s gone, pulling her down snug against him as he comes deep inside her. They lie together, sweaty and entwined, their heavy breathing filling the empty room.

“I trust you,” Natasha whispers, sounding vulnerable, like this admission leaves her more naked and open than the sex. “I really do trust you.”

“I know you do,” Steve tells her. “And I trust you. I believe in you.”

“Are we going to make it through this?” she asks, clinging to him. His softening cock slides out of her, so she shifts to the side slightly, draped over him.

“We are,” Steve says. Then, with more honesty, “I will do everything in my power to make that happen.”

Natasha nuzzles her face into his chest. “Okay. I believe it if you say it.”

“Good,” Steve says.

“No lookouts tonight, okay? No shifts. Let’s just sleep,” Natasha says.

“Okay,” Steve says, and he closes his eyes and lets her warm weight and the pleasant rush of chemicals in his brain carry him off.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Bucky says with a chuckle. He leans back against the bunker wall, his metal arm propped behind his head, and brings a cigarette up to his lips, taking a long drag and then exhaling. The smoke spirals up higher and higher between the two halves of Steve’s city skyline, never quite reaching the ceiling. 

“She sure is,” Steve agrees. “You never told me you knew her before.”

Bucky shrugs lazily. “Guess it must’ve slipped my mind.”

“Did you forget about her?” Steve asks. 

“I don’t know, Steve-o. You tell me.”

“I think that if you remembered her, you’d’ve told me about her.”

Bucky takes another pull from his cigarette, blows a perfect smoke ring, a skill he never quite mastered before the war. “Then I guess I must not remember her. It’s a shame, though, isn’t it? Not remembering a dish like that.”

“We should’ve had her over,” Steve says. “We never had anybody over.”

“That was all you, pal,” Bucky says. “Mister anti-social.”

“I’m not anti-social. I was just looking out for you. I didn’t want you to get overwhelmed!”

“Keeping me all to yourself, more like.”

“You could’ve invited somebody over if it bothered you that much,” Steve says. 

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, sure, considering my entire social circle outside of you lives in Wakanda.” He stubs out the cigarette, then runs his hand through his hair. It’s cut short, like it was before the war. 

Steve frowns. “When’d you get your hair cut?” he asks Bucky. 

“You liked it short,” Bucky answers.

“I liked it long, too,” Steve says.

“Nah. You liked it short,” Bucky says. “Know how I know?”

“How?”

“It’s short now, ain’t it?” 

“Well, it looks good,” Steve says. He slides down the wall next to Bucky and holds out his hand. “Loan me a smoke?”

“Sure,” Bucky says. Two cigarettes materialize between his lips, and he lights both of them, passing one to Steve. “You’re a shitty role-model, you know that?”

“Who am I role-modeling to, Buck?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. “People.”

“I think people stopped expecting me to be a role-model around the time I became a wanted fugitive,” Steve says.

“Eh. Some of ’em probably still believe in you,” Bucky says.

“That’s on them, not on me,” Steve says, taking a drag from his cigarette. It tastes like nothing much. 

The two of them sit in companionable silence for a while, smoking side-by-side, but just as Steve finishes his cigarette, Bucky turns to him, face serious, and says, “You really gotta take care of that shoulder, Steve.”

Steve wakes in pitch darkness, the touch-lights having long since timed out and turned off, with Natasha sprawled on top of him and his bullet wounds throbbing. He reaches over the edge of the cot and stretches his hand out until he finds his pack, flashlight still in the side pouch. He carefully slips out from under Natasha. She rolls on her side and into the warm indentation in the cot mattress left by his body. 

Using the flashlight, Steve retrieves the first aid kit from the table, makes his way to the bathroom, closes the door, then turns on the touch-light. He leans in close to the mirror to look at the entry wound at his shoulder. More of the cloudy fluid had seeped from the wound while he slept, and it dried in a greyish crust on Steve’s skin. The area around the wound is inflamed and discolored; it’s also definitely _not_ healing. Steve sighs as he opens the first aid kit.

Steve cleans the wounds as best he can—the back one is hard to reach, and he should probably have waited for Natasha’s help—before taping sterile gauze squares over them. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do, barring antibiotics, if those would even help. He hasn’t had antibiotics since 1944, but then again, he hasn’t had an infection since 1944, either. 

Once he’s done in the bathroom, he has to accept he’s probably awake for good. He finds his clothes from the previous night and pulls them on, then turns on one of the touch-lights in the kitchenette area. The small electric coffee maker won’t work without power, but suggests Steve might find coffee grounds somewhere. He locates some in the pantry, along with sugar and a tin of powdered milk, and sets about making coffee in a pan on the stove. He’s just pouring it into mugs when Natasha’s tousled head pops up from the cot.

“Is that _coffee_?” she asks. 

“Might be,” Steve says. He stirs sugar and milk powder into both cups and carries them over to Natasha, who sits up, camp blanket tucked under her arms, to receive hers with her bandaged hands.

“We could just stay here until the coffee runs out,” Natasha says, blowing on her cup. The steam swirls upward, reminding Steve of something he can’t quite bring to mind. 

“Or until the gas runs out and we lose the hot showers and stove,” Steve says.

Natasha sighs loudly. “Or we run out of canned fruit cocktail.”

“We’d run out of everything, eventually, but until then?”

“Living like kings, Rogers.”

“Cuppa coffee and a hot shower’s living like kings now?” Steve asks. “I think our standards have dropped.”

“Don’t forget the fruit cocktail. That’s the really important part,” Natasha says, smiling.

“Drink your coffee before it gets cold,” Steve instructs. He brings his own cup with him as he walks around the bunker, tapping the touch-lights on and gradually brightening the room. He hadn’t spent more time in the supply room last night than it took to grab the first aid kit from the wall just beside the door, so now he gives it a thorough inspection. The room looks fully stocked, with cold and hot weather gear, weaponry, and—

“Nat!” Steve calls out. “C’mere!” 

Natasha shuffles over, wrapped in her blanket and coffee cup still in hand. She peers into the supply closet. “Nice.”

Steve points to the shelf with a flourish, a magician revealing the rabbit he just pulled out of his hat. “I found a radio.”

Natasha lets out an impressed whistle at the sight. “You’re like a lucky charm!”

“Not sure that’s a widely shared opinion, but I try,” Steve says. 

Natasha nods. “Want to see if it actually works?”

“Yeah.” Steve scoops up the radio and a box of batteries next to it, and carries both items to the kitchen table. When he flips the switch, the radio doesn’t power on, but after changing out the batteries, Steve tries again, and the radio’s lights flicker slightly as it emits a loud crackle of static. “Bingo!”

“Now, is anybody out there?” Natasha mutters to herself, sitting in front of the radio and picking up the handset. She turns a knob on the radio, passing through static, more static, a channel that’s just a repeating pattern of piercing beeps, and a crackly emergency broadcast message. Finally, she presses the button on the handset and speaks into it. “Tanager calling Hawkeye. Come in, Hawkeye.”

They both wait for a response, but no sound comes from the radio. Natasha frowns slightly and speaks again.

“Tanager calling Hawkeye. Come in, Hawkeye. Hawkeye, do you read me?”

Again, nothing. Natasha’s frown deepens.

“Tanager calling All Team. Come in, Team. Repeat, this is Tanager calling All Team. Come in, Team. Please come in.”

Nothing. A long stretch of nothing. Natasha carefully sets the handset down on the table. 

“It was a reach,” Steve says, worried by the stony expression on her face. “We knew it was a reach. The explosion could have caused interference.”

“I know that, Steve,” Natasha says dully.

“We might be out of range.”

“I know that, too.” She looks defeated, slumping down in her chair with the blanket tucked up around her. 

Steve reaches for something else reassuring to say. “ _They_ could be out of range. Something else could be interfer—”

“—ager, come in,” crackles the radio. “This— calling— read me?”

Natasha scrambles for the handset. “This is Tanager. This is Tanager. Repeat message.”

“Signal isn— good. Tan— repeat?”

“This is Tanager responding. I’m here!” Natasha says into the handset. “Tanager and Captain, responding from Florence Base. Who is this? Where are you calling from?”

“—from Iowa.” The signal continues to cut in and out, and Steve can’t identify the voice through the crackling as anything other than adult and male. “Hawk— over.”

“Clint?” Steve asks, but Natasha shakes her head.

“I can’t tell. If they’re calling from Iowa, they could be calling from Hawkeye Base,” she says. 

“We have a Hawkeye Base?”

“It’s in the Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area in Iowa,” Natasha says to Steve, then into the handset, “Team, we’re coming to you. Tanager and Captain are coming to you. Clint, if that’s you, we’re coming to you. Whoever’s there, Tanager and Captain are en route. Over.”

The radio signal must be fading, because the crackles are joined by the hiss of static over a faint, “—opy, Nat—” then the signal cuts out completely. Natasha frantically turns the knob, but all they hear is static. 

“Shit, shit, shit!” Natasha says, still turning the dial back and forth. 

“No, this is good, it’s good,” Steve insists. “Someone’s there, and they know your name. They said ‘Nat’.”

“That could have been anything.”

“Anything that starts with ‘Nat’,” Steve says.

“Could have been ‘national’. They could be calling from a National Forest, from the National Guard,” Natasha lists off. 

“Yeah, or the Washington Nationals, sure, or it could be our team,” Steve says. “They knew you.”

“What if we walk all the way to Iowa and it turns out to be nothing?” Natasha asks. She looks paler in the touch-lights than she does in the sun. Her eyes are shiny with the beginnings of tears, which means it’s Steve’s turn to be the hopeful optimist. 

“Maybe we can find some bicycles.”

“Steve,” Natasha says.

“I want one with a basket. We can find you one with streamers on the handles.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Natasha says, sounding frustrated but no longer in danger of crying. “This could be a dead end. We’re making the decision to pack up and travel another 500 miles based on a fraction of a conversation with an unidentified party.”

“I have a good feeling about it,” Steve says. “I think it’s them, Nat. I think it’s somebody from the team.”

Natasha exhales, nodding her head slowly. “Okay. Okay, we’ll try Iowa. If nobody’s there…”

“We’ll figure it out then,” Steve finishes. 

“Okay,” Natasha says, and just like that, she’s dry-eyed and back to business. “We need to take inventory, pack as much as we can handle. Food, batteries, any medical supplies. Consult the atlas, god, this is going to be a long walk.”

“We should look for a geiger counter, see if we can figure out if it was nuclear or not,” Steve says.

“Water, as much as we can pack, plus water treatment tabs. I know they’ll have them. That’s standard for the safehouses.” Natasha stands, letting the blanket drop, and despite the night before, Steve still finds himself turning a little red and looking away.

“I was serious about the bicycles,” Steve said. “I could go look through the neighborhood, see what I can find, if you want to pack up here.” 

Natasha pulls on her clothes. “Hmm. I don’t love the idea of splitting up, but that would be a more effective use of our time.”

“I’ll suit up and go,” Steve says.

“I’d say be back in thirty, but—”

“Not much point when our watch batteries are dead.”

“Just don’t be long,” Natasha says. “I’m not doing this without you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Steve says. He grabs his fatigues from the bathroom and changes into them. They’re still a little stiff, but they’re cleaner and mostly dry. He stops by the supply room and gets ammo for his sidearm before heading for the stairs. 

“Hey,” Natasha calls after him.

Steve looks back at her. “Yeah?”

“If you find one of those bike wagons, take it,” she says. “We could haul more with us.”

“You got it,” Steve says, giving Natasha a mock salute before heading towards the spiral staircase. He pauses a moment to look back at her—she offers him one of her trademark half-smiles—and then he climbs up, up, up and out into the thin, grey light of post-apocalyptic early dawn.

Steve barely makes it to the next house before realizing he probably should have brought the shield, too, but the reality of navigating it and two bicycles would have made it more of a liability than a boon, anyway. His shoulder hurts, and he’s tired, more tired than he’s been since he was on the run after the Sokovia Accords and their “clusterfuck fallout”, as Clint had so eloquently put it, outside hearing range of his kids. Two years of house arrest left Clint bitter and without much inclination to mince words. Somehow, that only made Steve like him more.

The first house is a bust for bicycles, because despite Steve’s threat to find Natasha one with streamers on the handles, a unicorn bike with magenta streamers and training wheels just isn’t a practical choice. The next two houses yield more child-size bikes, plus a poorly maintained adult mountain bike with dry-rotted tires. Steve finds a sturdy cruising bike at the next house, complete with a bike trailer that looks like it was designed to carry kids, not cargo, but which will probably work just fine.

He’s almost exhausted the street and is considering going back for the mountain bike in hopes of finding some replacement tires when he spots an absolute gem of a bicycle: clean, in good condition, a white basket on the front and small carrying pack behind the seat, sturdy tires that look like they can stand a few hundred miles.

Satisfied with his finds, Steve stands between the two bikes and walks them back to the safe house. He rolls them right on into the living room, on the off chance he isn’t the only one canvassing the street for a ride, then he locks up and heads back down the cramped spiral stairs into the bunker with the intention of helping Natasha pack.

The road to Iowa must be paved with good intentions, however, because in the short period of time Steve spent looking for bicycles, Natasha has somehow packed everything useful and portable in the bunker into three bags: Steve’s pack, a new pack from the storage room to replace the one Natasha lost in the river, and a heavy canvas duffel bag. 

“Good thing I found a bike trailer,” Steve says, nodding at the duffel.

“Like you couldn’t carry that all the way to Iowa with one arm tied behind your back,” Natasha says. 

Steve laughs, a little halfheartedly, since he’s not so sure he really could carry it that far with the way his shoulder keeps throbbing. The discomfort is distracting enough that he has to force himself to focus on Natasha as she runs through the inventory list for each pack. Luckily, he trusts she knows what they need for the next leg of their journey, if his attention wanders. 

“And, _voilà!_ ” Natasha announces, brandishing a small chrome-plated device.

“What is it?” Steve asks.

“Geiger counter,” she says, handing it to Steve when he looks dubious. “Stark tech. That’s why it’s so—”

“Small, yet ostentatious?” Steve finishes. 

“A perfect description of Tony Stark,” Natasha agrees. 

“Does it work?” Steve asks, turning the device over in his hands to look for a switch or button to turn it on. Natasha plucks it out of his hands and gives it a brisk shake. The screen immediately powers on. 

“You know how Tony is. He plans for every contingency,” Natasha says. “It’s powered by kinetic energy. Just shake it until it has enough charge.” The geiger counter beeps rapidly a few times before letting out a high pitched shriek and then powering off again. She shakes it again several times, then smacks it, but the device stays dead. “Huh.”

“Does that mean radiation or no radiation?” Steve asks.

“I think it means that whatever it is, the geiger counter doesn’t know what to do with it. We’ll bring it anyway,” Natasha says. 

“Guess Tony didn’t plan for this particular contingency,” Steve says. 

Natasha shrugs. “Maybe some contingencies just can’t be planned for, after all.”

Steve can’t argue with that, so he starts double-checking the pack that he knows Natasha has packed perfectly, just to have something to turn his attention to. The contents match her verbal inventory as perfectly as he guessed they would, down the the extra pairs of clean socks. He finds something familiar and comforting in the idea of his whole life, his whole future, fitting into something he can carry on his back. He was always meant to be a soldier, at least in that way. He hooks the shield to the pack.

Natasha pulls on a pair of leather gloves and then stands with her hands on her hips, giving the room one more scan before turning to Steve and asking, “Ready to hit the road?”

“You packed the coffee, right?” Steve jokes, because of course she packed the coffee. Natasha gives him the ‘bitch, please’ face—thanks, Sam—and turns for the stairs. Steve follows her up to the living room, where she stops in front of the bicycles.

“These are both women’s bikes, you do realize?” Natasha asks.

“Yep, and mine has a basket,” Steve says, gesturing at his two-wheeled treasure. “I’ll switch the trailer to mine.”

“Damn right you will,” Natasha says. “Where are my streamers?”

“On a unicorn bike with training wheels.”

“Lame.”

“I could go back and get it for you,” Steve offers. “If I took off the training wheels, it might fit.”

Natasha rolls her eyes.“Ugh. A height joke, Rogers? Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“Not all of us can outgrow height jokes.”

“ _Ugh!_ ”

Steve laughs, and it feels good, laughing at his own stupid joke and Natasha’s feigned outrage. He unhooks the trailer and reattaches it to his own bicycle, then secures the large duffel in the trailer. When he shoulders his pack, he has to bite down on a hiss of pain, but he manages to keep Natasha from noticing. No reason to worry her when they still have 500 miles to go.

“We’re not going through Cincinnati again, are we? Because I’ve had all the bridge trolls I can take for one end-times,” Steve says.

“No, there’s another way across the river northbound, farther to the west,” Natasha says. “Might get a little tricky.”

“Oh?”

“Atlas says there’s a ferry, so either we’re commandeering a boat or we’re continuing west until we find a bridge without armed goons.”

Steve sighs as he settles himself onto his bicycle. “I hope you know how to pilot a boat.”

“I know how to pilot everything,” Natasha says, swinging herself onto the seat of her bike. “I’ll lead, since I actually looked at the map.”

Steve just nods, and off they go, pedaling northbound. After the first few hills, he stops worrying about losing the contents of the bike trailer and just enjoys the cold air whipping past his face. The skyline still shivers on the horizon, but snow fuzzes the edges. Steve feels like he’s chasing it as he zips down another steep hill, like if he could just go fast enough, he could catch up to it before it fades away entirely. 

Natasha shouts something back at him after they’ve been riding for a while, but Steve can’t make out the words. When she stops her bike and points at the river, though, he knows she’s indicating they’re at the crossing. One dingy white boat, too small to really call a ferry, waits at a dock, water lapping at the worn wood. The grass lining the gravel track to the dock is edged with frost. 

“You load up the bikes, and I’ll get the boat started,” Natasha says. 

Steve does as instructed, bringing the bicycles onto the deck while Natasha goes into the cabin and then disappears below deck. After several minutes, Steve starts to worry that whatever has been interfering with electronics has crippled the boat as well, but then he hears the belching roar of an engine powering to life. The boat shudders a few times before Natasha appears above deck again, wiping her grimy hands on her pants.

“Diesel engine, no electrical components. We got lucky that the damn thing’s really just a glorified outboard motor,” she explains. 

“As long as it gets us across the river, I’m not asking any questions,” Steve says. 

The boat slowly carries them across the Ohio River, then Steve helps Natasha dock on the north bank. They unload the bicycles and begin traveling west, the river to their left an easy landmark to keep them pointed in the right direction. Steve is content to follow Natasha, who bikes with the determination of an Olympic cyclist. Not having to lead had been one of the best parts of retiring to New York, where he was content to let Bucky pick what they ate, what movies they watched, what they did with their copious free time. Steve justified it as giving Bucky the opportunity to exercise free will, but god’s honest truth, it was mostly just a relief to not have to make decisions. 

This road isn’t as crowded with abandoned cars as the interstate had been, and the ride is smooth and easy for the first hour-and-a-half, up until the road takes an abrupt turn to the north. Their bikes skid to a stop in front of the explanation for the lack of vehicles along the river. A multi-vehicle crash blocks both lanes, with at least five or six cars in a twisted, burnt-out wreck. The charred skeletons visible inside the nearest vehicle attest to the accident’s fatality. 

Natasha whistles. “Damn.”

Before Steve can stop himself, he says, dryly, “The traffic’s a lot worse on this side of town,” which makes Natasha whip her head in his direction.

“Steve!” she says, looking at him like he’s losing his marbles, and to be fair, Steve isn’t sure it’s not shell shock scrambling his brains a little. 

“Sorry,” Steve says. “Gallows humor.”

“We’re not at the gallows yet,” she says, her worried expression disappearing back under the pleasant, but neutral, Black Widow smile, which of course means she _is_ actually worried about him. He needs to try harder; they both have enough on their plates without Natasha having to worry that he’s on the verge of cracking up.

“I’m okay, Nat. I’m fine, really,” Steve says. She doesn’t seem convinced, though, so he adds, “I probably could have stood another night of a hot shower and a real bed, is all.”

Natasha’s expression softens, and she quirks his favorite little half-smile at him. “Never pegged you for the kind of guy who gets sentimental after one night of creature comforts.”

“What can I say?” Steve offer with a shrug. “It was pretty damn comforting.”

Natasha snorts a laugh, and just like that, the small bit of tension between them breaks. Steve grins at her—see how okay I am?—and bends down for her when she steps in closer and turns her face up for a kiss. It’s a chaste kiss, especially given the night before, but it really is comforting. He opens his eyes as she steps away, watching the cityscape shadows play across her cheeks. 

“We’ll go around,” Natasha say, and immediately sets about walking her bike onto the shoulder of the road, well off to the side to give the wreck a wide berth. Steve follows behind, careful to avoid any dips or roots that could snare the trailer. 

The accident extends far beyond the initial burnt cars. Driver after driver must have found themselves surprised by the sudden stop, though most of the cars towards the rear of the pile up are empty, some of them with doors left hanging open. Their occupants survived the crash, though whether or not they survived the bridge trolls or any atmospheric contaminant is a mystery Steve and Natasha don’t have the time or luxury to solve. 

Once free of the wreckage, Natasha guides them back to the road, and the two of the resume pedaling northbound, following a course of roads that will take them to the Indiana border. As they ride, Steve splits his attention between the road and the surrounding scenery, and he can see Natasha doing the same, scanning every clump of underbrush, every building, for the inevitable threat. They both know how unlikely they are to reach their destination without any run-ins with other survivors. As the weather worsens and living conditions deteriorate without power or clean water, Steve suspects the odds of a conflict will only increase.

The weather has already decided to make itself a problem. Steve usually withstands temperature variances better than the average person, but along with the fatigue and the decreased healing, he’s struggling with the cold. The air that initially felt crisp now feels sharp, the occasional snowflake hitting his face. His nose and fingers have started going numb, and glancing down as his hands, Steve notes how red they look clutching the handlebars of his bike. 

After another half hour of riding, Steve increases his pace to pull up level with Natasha. Her face is red and wind-chapped.

“We need to stop,” Steve calls over to her. She nods and comes to a standstill in the middle of the road.

“I don’t know about you, but I think we need to break out more of the cold-weather gear,” Steve says, making a show of rubbing his reddened hands together. Knowing Natasha, he suspects she’ll believe he’s playing up his own discomfort in order to convince her to bundle up, but that she’ll go along with it anyway.

“You’re probably right,” she concedes. She grimaces as she uncurls her hands from the handlebars, her injured palms obviously stiff and uncomfortable. She and Steve prop the bikes upright and then both dismount and go to the duffel to find their coats, gloves, and knit caps. Steve considers a balaclava for a moment, but settles on a polar fleece gaiter instead. He pulls it up over his nose, making Natasha laugh.

“What?” Steve asks, muffled by the fleece.

“You look like you’re on your way to rob a bank.”

“We probably could, if we wanted to,” Steve says. “Not a lot of security these days.”

“Sure, I can see Captain America choosing bank heists as a valid late-in-life career choice,” Natasha says.

“Hey, who you calling late-in-life? I don’t look a day over eighty!”

“Eh,” Natasha says, somehow managing to interject a comically Russian accent into the single syllable. “Eighty-five on a good day.”

While Steve’s cold weather gear is entirely black, as is most of Natasha’s, she tops off her look with a powder-pink knit hat, complete with pompom, and a pair of thick mittens over her gloves. With her flushed cheeks and wisps of blonde hair hanging down below the folded hat band, she reminds Steve of the young girls from his old neighborhood before the war. She looks deceptively innocent, unburdened by any great troubles. He wonders, not for the first time, what she was like as a girl, and what she might be like now as a woman if her innocence and autonomy hadn’t been taken from her at such a young age. Would she be carefree and happy, or would she have still been, as Steve’s Ma used to put it, an old soul?

Bundled up in their additional layers, they resume their journey, and Steve is surprised by how quickly they reach the Indiana border, an abrupt turn true north. They pause there to drink some water, eat protein bars, and relieve themselves in the relative privacy of roadside shrubs. A pair of crows watch them with interest, and when a piece of shiny silver wrapper from one of the protein bars flutters to the ground, the braver crow swoops down to snare it before flapping back up to its companion.

“Maybe my codename could be Crow,” Steve says. 

“Whatever you say, Big Bird,” Natasha says. 

Steve can’t muster more than a “hey!” of protest before Natasha has gotten back on her bicycle and taken off again, this time at a furious pace. Steve actually has to pedal hard to catch up with her, between her short head start and the extra drag of the trailer on his bike, and as he pulls beside her, she turns her head to grin at him. The wind catches her pale hair and blows it around her face like dandelion fluff barely clinging to the stem. 

They ride and ride, the miles of flat road disappearing beneath their tires as they travel parallel to the state line. Steve knows they’ve made progress—hours of it—but the fact that they could cross back over into Ohio with barely a jerk of the handlebars doesn’t sit comfortably. His shoulder doesn’t sit comfortably, either; by early afternoon, Steve has sweated through his fatigues under his winter gear, even though the temperature has continued to drop. When they stop for a water break, he sneaks a look at his shoulder, gritting his teeth together as he pulls the gauze pad away from the entrance wound. The fluid seeping from the wound is closer to black now, the flesh around it inflamed. 

“You alright, Steve?” Natasha asks, and Steve hastily releases the gauze, tugging on his shirt to give the impression that he was just readjusting the fabric layers under the strap of his pack.

“Where do you think we’ll break for the night?” Steve asks in return. Natasha doesn’t seem to notice that he hasn’t answered her question as she removes her mittens, pulls out her atlas, and peers at it, tracing their path with one gloved fingertip.

“We’re about to enter Spring Grove now. I’d like to make Muncie before we break,” she says.

“I did a show there once, during the war,” Steve says.

“I bet it hasn’t changed that much,” Natasha says. “It’s another three, three-and-a-half hours, though, and with this weather, it’s hard to predict when it’ll actually get dark.”

“We can make it,” Steve says. “No more breaks. We can eat and drink while we ride.”

“My legs are going to look great after this trip,” Natasha says.

Steve laughs. “Yeah, ’cause they’re pretty shabby-looking now.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Rogers.”

“Pretty sure it’ll get me at least to Muncie.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Natasha says, refolding the atlas pages and tucking it into her pack. “Let’s get back on the road.”

They pick up the Cardinal Greenway, a beautiful paved bike path, in Spring Grove. Two hours later, the occasional snow flurries kick up and become a steady light snowfall. The snow melts when it hits the path, making the pavement slick, but still manageable. Steve worries about what will happen when the temperature drops below freezing long enough for the wet roads to freeze. The mindless work of biking on a perfectly flat surface gives Steve’s brain too much time to mull over the various worst case scenarios. He doesn’t want to consider the possibility that they might have abandon the bikes and, more importantly, the heavy bag in the bike trailer, and make the rest of the trek on foot. He doesn’t _want_ to consider it… but he does anyway. 

He tries focusing on something else, like the pink pompom bobbing up and down on top of Natasha’s hat as she pedals or small details from their night together, the placement of freckles on her shoulder, the texture of ridged scar tissue on her knee. Every time, though, his mind drifts, and he’s right back to worrying about ice. He’s so goddamn tired of ice, but it follows him like a curse. 

Thinking about ice naturally leads to thinking about Bucky, as most things do. Steve remembers what Bucky said to him in the dream, about Steve needing to take care of his shoulder. He presses his palm to the entrance wound, and mutters an apology to Bucky under his breath. He and Natasha don’t have time for Steve to stop and baby a bullet wound, not if they’re going to get to Iowa before real nuclear winter sets in. Whatever else happens, Steve wants to get Natasha to Clint and his family, if they’re still alive. She should be able to have that. She deserves it. 

Steve is so lost in thought that he almost runs into Natasha when she stops her bike abruptly. He manages to veer to the side and stop just slightly ahead of her, walking the bike backwards until they’re side by side. Natasha pulls the map out and squints at it. Steve realizes then how low the light has gotten.

“We’re right outside Muncie,” Natasha says. She gestures at a bridge passing over the bike path not too far ahead. “Once we pass under the highway, we’ll be in a residential area. We should start looking for a place to stop for the night.”

“It’s going to be a cold one,” Steve says. 

“You’re the king of understatement,” Natasha says. “We’ll look for something inside, a storefront, oooh, maybe a gas station!” She makes a cute little excited gesture with her gloved hands up near her face. 

“You really like gas stations, huh?”

“I really like free chocolate after a hundred miles on a bike.”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, “I feel—”

“So help me God, Steve Rogers, if you tell me you feel guilty about taking chocolate from an abandoned gas station!”

“—kinda guilty about looting,” Steve finishes. 

“It’s not looting if it’s abandoned!” Natasha insists. 

“They might come back,” Steve says. Natasha glares at him, and while he admits her glare is usually a sight to behold, the ferocity is undercut by her red nose and the fact she keeps sniffling from the cold. He laughs at her, and she balls up one fist and punches him in the arm. The combination of her mitten and his layers blunts the force. “Fine,” he concedes with a laugh. “Fine, we’ll loot the first abandoned gas station we come to.”

“You can leave cash by the register if it makes you feel better,” Natasha says.

“I didn’t exactly have my wallet on me when we were in Jersey, Nat.”

Natasha shrugs. “Then I’ll leave cash.”

“Sure,” Steve says. “Let’s go break into a gas station before it gets dark.”

“Dibs on the Snickers!”

“All of them?”

“You bet your ass, all of them,” Natasha says. “Hundred-mile bike ride. If you’re lucky, I’ll split the Milky Ways with you.”

“You kids these days with your fancy candy bars,” Steve says, as they start pedaling towards the bridge. “What’s wrong with plain old chocolate?”

“Is this one of those times where you get me to explain something to you, even though you already know what it is?” Natasha asks.

“I mean, _peanuts_ in _chocolate_? What kind of world is this we live in?” 

“Nice try, Steve. This is one of those times, isn’t it?”

“This is definitely one of those times,” Steve says. 

“I knew it!” Natasha says.

“We had Snickers in the ’40s, Nat.”

“None of your biographies mention what an asshole you are.”

“You read my biographies?” Steve asks, as they emerge from a wooded area and start to pass houses on one side.

“I read everyone’s biographies,” Natasha says. “Even mine. None of it was accurate, but I still read it.”

They veer off the bike path, through a backyard, and up onto a street lined with small, well-maintained homes in search of a gas station that meets Natasha’s requirements. As they ride down the road, Steve begins noticing something – movement behind the windows of many of the houses. Curtains shift. Blinds part. A few times, Steve even sees someone standing at a window watching them pass.

“Nat, there’s actually people here,” Steve says, as they turn up a promising-looking street. 

“I saw them,” Natasha says. “All we can do is stay alert and hope nobody wants any trouble.”

When they turn another corner, heading into an industrial area in town, Natasha pulls up short, Steve stopping beside her. He sees why she stopped: the street ahead of them is filled with a large gathering of people surrounding a collection of large metal drums, each with a fire burning inside it. Unlike the bridge trolls, these people look relaxed, not hostile. Steve sees women, men, children, even a few elderly people clustering around the fires, some of them cooking food on sticks. 

Natasha and Steve exchange a glance, one that suggests they should consider backtracking and going around the people. Before they have a chance to do that, however, an older white man near the edge of the group notices them and waves.

“Hello, there!” the man calls out. 

Natasha cuts her eyes over to Steve, who waves back at the man. “Hello,” he calls back.

“Why don’t you join us? We’ve got hot food,” the man calls, taking a few steps in Natasha and Steve’s direction. 

“We’re just passing through,” Natasha responds. “We don’t mean any trouble.”

The man smiles, continuing to walk towards the two of them. “Well, heck,” he says, as he gets close to speak in a normal voice. He has a friendly face, a little worn by time, but still open and trusting. “I didn’t expect you did. Offer still stands. It’s not much, just hot dogs and some fruits and vegetables we managed to pick before the cold set in.”

Steve and Natasha share another look, one that suggests Natasha would prefer to find that gas station, but that Steve would really, really like a hot dog. Steve can call the moment Natasha concedes defeat, because she sighs loudly. He grins back at her.

“Fine,” Natasha says under her breath to Steve, then, addressing the man, “We’d love a hot dog.”

“Great! Come on over, and we’ll make introductions,” the man says. “I’m Bill, Bill Renken. I was the high school principal up until all this hoopla happened. Now I guess I’m the evening meal coordinator.”

Natasha and Steve dismount and walk their bicycles as they follow Bill back towards his group. The smell from the cooking hot dogs makes Steve’s mouth water. Most of the people in the group gathered by the fire take a moment to acknowledge Steve and Natasha with a nod or a smile. 

“I’m Natasha, and this is Steve,” Natasha says. 

“Welcome to Muncie, Natasha and Steve,” Bill says. “You folks come from very far?”

“We biked up from Kentucky this morning,” Steve says. 

Bill lets out an impressed whistle. “That’s a long haul for one day. You take the Greenway?” Steve nods. “That’s a pretty ride. Hopefully all this confusion will get cleared up before the path really needs maintained. Be a shame to see it overgrown.”

“Yeah, it would,” Steve says. He doesn’t think the confusion will clear up anytime soon, but finding a group of people who still have a positive outlook is too refreshing for Steve to say anything to negate that. 

“Everyone, this is Natasha and Steve,” Bill says, gesturing at each of them in turn. 

Suddenly, a little girl’s voice pipes up. “Mommy! That’s Captain America! I see his shield.”

A murmur goes through the crowd, as the adults finally notice what the girl spotted right away. Steve takes off his hat and runs his hand through his hair, smiling at the people sheepishly.

“I’m not,” he says. “Sam Wilson is Captain America.”

“But Mommy, look at his _shield_. It’s a really real live Captain America shield,” the girl insists loudly, pointing at the shield strapped to Steve’s pack. The plastic bobbles at the ends of her many neat braids bob along with her adamant gestures.

“Steve…” Bill says thoughtfully. “Steve _Rogers_. Oh, heck, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, Captain!”

Steve shakes his head and puts up his gloved hands in protest. “Really, no, I’m not—”

“—Captain America anymore,” Natasha interjects. “He retired, and Sam Wilson stepped into the role.”

“He’s a better Captain America than I ever was,” Steve says, and means it.

“Still, Captain, it’s an honor,” Bill says, reaching for Steve’s hand and shaking it firmly. 

“Please, just call him Steve, or he’s going to be too humble to even eat his hot dog,” Natasha says with a smile, “and he’s really been missing hot dogs.”

“Of course, of course!” Bill says. “Steve. It’s great to have you, and you, too, miss.”

“Can I touch your shield?” the same little girl asks, running over to Steve and standing slightly too close to him. Her bright yellow sweater and dark skin catch the firelight in a warm glow.

“Jenny,” a tall black woman, probably the girl’s mother, scolds, but Jenny ignores her, and Steve and Natasha are soon swamped by a dozen or so children, ranging in age from around five to early teens. 

“If you’re not Captain America anymore, why do you got his shield still?” one little boy asks, to which several other children nod their apparent agreement.

“The new Captain America, my friend Sam, had a special shield made just for him,” Steve explains. He takes his shield from off his pack. “This one isn’t a very good shape for flying.”

“Captain America can _fly_?” asks a very small boy.

“New Captain America can fly ’cause he used to be the Falcon, who was really cool, but now he’s Captain America instead,” Jenny explains. 

“She must be the local Captain America expert,” Natasha whispers to Steve, who grimaces a little, then tries to hide it with a stage-worthy smile. 

“That’s right kids,” Steve says. He feels himself slipping back into his Captain America voice, which seems to thrill the children. “He was the Falcon, and now he’s Captain America, with his own shield that’s just right for flying.”

Jenny must get tired of waiting for Steve to grant permission, because she plants her hand, palm down, right over the star on Steve’s shield. “Your shield is dirty,” she informs him. “You should wash it so the red and blue parts will show better.”

“Yeah, Cap, poor shield hygiene,” Natasha whispers. 

“Stop it,” Steve whispers back. Jenny jerks her hand away from the shield. “Oh, not you, Jenny. You can touch the shield if you want.” Jenny’s hand immediately returns to the shield. The other children crowd in close to her, reaching for the shield. Some of them seem content with just one finger on the edge of it, while others tap on it or feel the edge. Jenny stays firmly planted with her hand splayed over the star the whole time, until the other children’s curiosity peters out and they start to wander away from Steve and Natasha. 

“Jenny, that’s enough now,” Jenny’s mother says. “Let Steve and Natasha alone to eat some dinner.”

“But Mommy!”

“I’ll tell you what, Jenny,” Steve says, getting down onto one knee so he’s at eye level with her. “If it’s okay with your mom, you can watch my shield for me while I eat a hot dog.” He looks up at Jenny’s mother, who nods. 

“Really?” Jenny asks, looking like she’s about to explode from excitement. 

“Really,” Steve promises. He stands again, then he and Natasha park their bicycles off the road, just on the edge of the group. When he walks back towards the fires, someone shoves a paper plate into his free hand, filled with two hot dogs, a couple packets of ketchup, and an assortment of vegetables. He sees someone else has done the same for Natasha.

“Can I hold it now?” Jenny asks. 

“It’s a little heavy. I think it would be better if you sit first,” Steve says. Jenny immediately drops to the ground to sit cross-legged. Steve sets the shield down so it’s leaning across her lap. She puts both arms over it and hugs it close. 

“It _is_ heavy,” Jenny says, looking down at the shield with awe. 

Someone unfolds a pair of camp chairs for Steve and Natasha near one of the fires. Steve doesn’t give the shield a backwards glance as he takes a seat, balancing his plate on his leg. He hears Jenny talking to other children behind him, all of them marveling over the shield. Natasha sits, handing him a beer that she somehow made appear out of seemingly nowhere. The air is warm this close to the fire, and the hot dogs and beer remind Steve of the barbecues Sam used to throw when both of them still lived in D.C. Sometimes Natasha would join them, sometimes a few of the guys from the VA. They tried to pull something together a few times after Steve moved back to Brooklyn, but it never quite felt the same, and after they finally unraveled the nightmare that was Thanos, Steve was too wrapped up in his retirement and fussing over Bucky to give Sam the kind of attention a good friend like that really deserved. 

Natasha’s knee bumps against Steve’s, startling him out of his reverie. “You look lost in thought,” she says. 

“I was thinking about Sam’s barbecues back in D.C.,” Steve says. 

“Remember the time he accidentally bought those vegan dogs?” Natasha asks.

Steve laughs. “And they were so bad, but none of us wanted to say anything.”

“God, those were nasty,” Natasha says. “I’ve had great vegan food before, but that was not it.”

“That was definitely not it,” Steve agrees. Natasha smiles and takes a drink from her bottle of beer. She removed her mittens and gloves at some point. The bandages around her hands look like they need to be changed. People mill about, talking to each other and occasionally giving them a curious a look, but nobody asks them any questions or tries to interrupt them, which Steve appreciates greatly. 

“Do you think he’s out there somewhere?” Natasha asks quietly.

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Maybe he’s at Hawkeye Base.”

“Maybe so.”

Natasha scooches her camp chair closer to Steve’s so she can lay her head on his shoulder. She sighs and says, “This has been a hell of a week, hasn’t it?”

“I’ve definitely had better,” Steve says.

“Last night wasn’t so bad, though.”

Steve’s face feels warm from more than just the fire. “No, last night wasn’t bad at all.”

“I mean, it was no gas station chocolate,” Natasha says. 

“I don’t think we can loot a gas station now, Nat.”

“Well, obviously, Steve. They fed us hot dogs.”

“Can’t loot people who fed you hot dogs,” Steve agrees.

Natasha sighs again dramatically. “I was _really_ looking forward to that.”

“The looting?”

“The chocolate.”

“We have beer,” Steve says.

“Mmm. Beer is also good,” Natasha says. 

They eat the rest of their food, Natasha’s head jostling Steve’s shoulder slightly as she chews, reminding him how much the bullet wound still hurts. He’s exhausted, and his head aches. He doesn’t remember the last time he had a headache. 

“You two doing alright over there?” Bill asks. Steve nods, and he can feel Natasha doing the same against his shoulder. “Good. I’ve been talking to some folks, and we’ve had several offers to put you up for the night, if you’re interested. Nobody’s got power, of course, but you’ll still be more comfortable than you would camping outside.”

“We wouldn’t want to impose on anyone,” Steve says.

“I promise you, nobody here sees it as an imposition,” Bill says.

“We’d be happy to take someone up on their generous offer, as long as they don’t mind taking both of us,” Natasha says. Steve nods; he isn’t letting them split up at this point.

“Carl and Becky Harris have a pull-out you could use, and I think the Carmichaels said something about an air mattress,” Bill says, “but Valerie Wash—”

“Washington!” little Jenny shouts from under the shield, which she’s managed to balance on her back like a turtle shell. “Valerie Washington is my mommy!”

“That’s her mommy, Steve,” Natasha whispers.

“Yeah, I gathered,” Steve answers quietly.

“Val’s son is away at college in Chicago, and she offered you his room,” Bill says. Steve barely manages to hold back a flinch, and he can see Natasha doing the same. If the Washington boy is in Chicago, he might not be making it back home. Odds aren’t terrible that Chicago could also have fallen victim to the same mysterious explosions and bright flash. 

“I think you would be comfortable there,” Valerie says. “It has a private bathroom. Plumbing still works for now, though we’re all boiling our drinking water as a precaution.”

“That sounds lovely,” Natasha says, in the kind of smooth, gracious tone Steve has heard her use with politicians and, on no few occasions, Tony. Valerie looks pleased and flattered; Jenny looks like she won the Avengers-Are-Staying-At-My-House Lottery. 

“We’ll be wrapping things up out here shortly, so everyone can get the little ones out of the cold,” Bill says. 

“Can we help with clean-up?” Steve asks, but Bill shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t hear of it. You two have already had a long day, riding from Kentucky,” Bill says. “I’m sure Val can find something for you to help with around her place, if you’re dead set on it.”

“Of course. Whatever we can do to help,” Steve says immediately, looking at Valerie. 

“Oh, Bill, really?” Valerie sighs, then says to Steve, “Ignore him. Everything at our house is just fine, though Jenny might try to talk you into reading her a book before she goes to sleep.”

“I’m sure Steve would be honored,” Natasha says, throwing him under the bedtime-book bus like the dirty traitor she is. 

Steve plasters on a big smile in Jenny’s direction. She’s struggling to stand with both arms looped through the shield’s straps. “Absolutely. Jenny, you mind letting me carry the shield back to your house?”

“Sure,” Jenny says. “It’s too heavy, anyway.”

Steve retrieves his shield, then he and Natasha collect their packs and bikes. They exchange goodbyes and waves with the citizens of Muncie before following Valerie and Jenny home. Jenny reaches for Steve’s hand as they walk. His pack digs into his wounded shoulder as he balances between the bike on one side and Jenny on the other, but he doesn’t mind. Natasha turns her head to look at him.

“I’d say you have a fan,” she says.

“I bet she’d throw me over in a heartbeat if Sam were here,” Steve says. 

“Sure, but who wouldn’t?” Natasha asks, with a smile to keep any sting out of her words. To be perfectly honest, Steve would throw himself over for Sam in a heartbeat. 

Valerie’s house is a small, older ranch with what was probably a beautiful flower bed before the sudden plunge into cold weather. An inflatable kiddie pool with two inches of frozen water sits forlornly in the front yard, along with a frost-rimed hula hoop and other reminders that it is, in fact, still supposed to be summer. They park the bikes under the carport next to a late-model Honda sedan.

Inside the house, Valerie lights a series of candles and camp lanterns. Natasha looks at the pictures hanging on the walls as the light gradually increases in the living room. Most of them are posed photographs of Jenny and her brother, baby pictures and annual school portraits. Jenny leads Steve through the living room and down the hall to a small bedroom that obviously belongs to a teenage boy. The shelves are covered in trophies and medals for basketball and Math Olympiad. 

“This is Mike’s room,” Jenny says. Steve sets his pack and the duffel on the floor next to the double bed. “My room is next door.”

“Jenny, come get ready for bed!” Valerie calls.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back,” Jenny says to Steve. 

“I’ll be here,” Steve promises. Jenny runs out of the room and almost slams head-first into Natasha in the hall directly outside. 

“Sorry!” Jenny says before sprinting off again.

“Looks comfortable,” Natasha says. She sits on the bed and bounces a little. 

“Better than a camp cot,” Steve says. 

“More room, for sure,” Natasha says. “Not that it was a hardship.”

Steve blushes slightly, thankful for the low light. “No, it wasn’t a hardship. It was really nice.”

Natasha fans herself. “Watch it with that dirty talk, Rogers! _Nice._ Wow.”

“You know what I mean,” Steve says. 

“You mean you think I’m a swell gal,” Natasha says.

“Nat!” Steve says, blushing furiously now. “Come on.”

“No, it’s sweet. You’re sweet,” Natasha says. “You’re sweet and I’m nice.”

“I oughta leave you here in Muncie, go to Iowa by myself,” Steve grumbles, but Natasha stands and catches his face between her bandaged hands, holding it still.

“No. You wouldn’t do that,” she says. “We’re in this together. You promised me.”

“I did,” Steve says.

“Besides,” Natasha says, her mouth shaping into a little smile, “I’m a nice dame.”

“Nat!”

“Shh,” she says, pressing her lips to his briefly, her hands still framing his face. 

“ _Nat._ ”

“I like that you are how you are,” Natasha says. She pats one cheek gently before letting go of his face. Her left eyebrow eyebrow quirks up. “We’ve got company.”

“I’m ready for my book,” Jenny announces from behind Steve. He turns to see her standing in the doorway, clothed in a pair of purple, zip-up footie pajamas with a hood. The hood has cat ears on it. She holds out a book and a flashlight. 

“Uh, I guess I’ll go read Jenny a book now,” Steve says to Natasha.

“Make sure you do the voices. Kids like it when you do the voices,” Natasha says.

“Do you do the voices?” Steve asks.

“Of course. Always. Aunt Natasha is the best at the voices.”

“I bet you are.”

“Come on,” Jenny says, handing Steve the flashlight. “My room is this way.”

Steve laughs and follows Jenny, flashlight in hand. Valerie meets them in the hallway. 

“You really don’t have to read to her,” she says. 

“I don’t mind,” Steve says. 

“She’ll try to sucker you into a second one if you let her,” Valerie warns.

“Consider me un-sucker-able,” Steve says.

Steve is, of course, thoroughly suckerable, and doesn’t leave Jenny’s room until after the third book. He tells her goodnight and does the best job he can of tucking her in, though it’s a pretty amateur tucking. She keeps the flashlight, and he goes back to the other bedroom to find Natasha changed out of her winter gear and fatigues and into a pair of sweats. Steve watches her turn down the bedcovers, moving silently around the bed to arrange pillows. 

“There’s a set for you at the bottom of the duffel” Natasha tells him. 

“Hmm?” 

“Sweats,” Natasha says. “You were staring. Figured you were wondering if you had a pair, too.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Steve says. “Thanks.” He kneels by the duffel bag and starts digging through it.

“So, how many books did you end up reading?” Natasha asks.

“Three. I’m a sucker.”

“You are,” Natasha says, sounding fond. “It’s one of your better qualities.”

“Hey, as soon as I found out that _Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type_ had two sequels, I couldn’t say no,” Steve says.

“I know that one. _Duck for President_ , right?” 

Steve nods. “I mean, I was a little disappointed that Duck didn’t become president after all, but I feel like I learned a lot about the election process.”

“Clint and Laura’s kids have those books. Had.” Natasha’s face falls. 

“ _Have_ ,” Steve says. “Maybe they brought them to Iowa with them.”

Natasha forces her face into a smile. “Maybe so.”

“Did you want help changing your bandages before I go change?” Steve asks.

She shakes her head. “I changed them while you were reading. The stitches held. You did a good job.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure you did a good job.”

“No, I mean are you sure you don’t want me to take a look at them?” Steve says. 

“They’re fine,” Natasha says. “How about you?”

“Me? I’m fine,” Steve says. “Glad we made it to Muncie.”

“Me, too,” Natasha says. 

Steve takes his sweats and toiletries to the bathroom to change and clean up a little. In the flickering candlelight, he can’t really tell if the bullet wounds have gotten any worse, but they’re hot to the touch and have a foul smell. Steve finds rubbing alcohol and cotton balls in the medicine cabinet and uses those to clean both wounds out again before putting antibiotic ointment and fresh bandages on them. His shoulder feels stiff; he rotates it a little and hisses in pain at how badly that pulls at his injuries. At some point, he’ll have to talk about this with Natasha, but he hopes that can be put off until they reach Iowa. 

Once changed, Steve returns to the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him. Natasha has already claimed the side of the bed farther from the door, but closer to the window. She’s bundled up under the covers in a little ball, her back to Steve. He slides into bed next to her, appreciating her body heat under the blankets, lying on his back. After a few minutes, Natasha lightly kicks his shins with her heels. 

“You could at least spoon a girl,” she mumbles into her pillow. 

Steve laughs. “Yes, ma’am.” He rolls onto his side—the good one, thankfully—and presses his body against Natasha’s back and legs, draping an arm over her. 

“Better,” Natasha says.

“You sure we shouldn’t take turns keeping watch?” Steve offers, suspecting Natasha has no plans to leave this warm, comfortable bed before morning.

Confirming this, Natasha makes an unhappy noise. “Jenny can keep watch.”

“Jenny’s probably asleep already,” Steve points out.

“I’m asleep already.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, pulling Natasha a little more snugly against him. “Get some rest.”

“Mmhmm.”

Sleep doesn’t come fast for Steve. Natasha snores softly next to him, but his mind is wide awake and going over their travels so far, calculating how far they’ll make it tomorrow, worrying over the weather and Natasha’s hands and his shoulder. His head still hurts, and the skin around his injuries feels too tight. Eventually, he succumbs to exhaustion, falling into a restless sleep.

Steve wakes up, disoriented and queasy, some unknown period of time later. His eyes can’t focus in the low light filtering in through the curtains. His clothes are damp with sweat. Steve sits up, and immediately regrets it as a wave of nausea passes through him. He manages to make it from the bedroom to the bathroom before vomiting into the toilet – something else he hasn’t done since the serum. After flushing, he hugs the seat and lets his head loll against his arm, his hair wet and sticking to his skin. 

“You’re not looking so hot, Steve,” Bucky says. 

“Don’t feel so hot, either,” Steve says. Another wave of nausea hits him, and he pukes into the toilet again. 

“You never did know how to take care of yourself,” Bucky says. He puts the back of his hand to Steve’s forehead. “Jesus, Steve, you’re burning up.”

“How many times I heard you say that?” Steve mumbles. “Musta been a hundred times.”

“Well, you were always trying to die on me, you jerk.”

“If at first you don’t succeed,” Steve says, his voice sing-songy. 

“Try, try again, huh?” Bucky asks. 

Bucky’s hand feels so cool against Steve’s forehead. Steve opens his eyes to stare at him. Bucky’s face doesn’t come into focus, but the skyline around him does, sharper and clearer than it was the day before, and so close that Steve feels like he could crawl right into it. If he could just drag himself forward a little, he’d make it back to the city and Bucky.

“What are you doing?” Bucky asks him softly. “Do you want to die? Is that it?”

“I just want to go with you, Buck,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, I know you do,” Bucky says. He brushes the sweaty hair off of Steve’s forehead, and it feels like a cool breeze ruffling his hair. “But you can’t do that, pal. Not yet. You promised Natasha, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Steve feels tears welling up in his eyes. He squeezes them closed. 

“You just gotta hold on a little longer,” Bucky says. It sounds like a promise. “Can you do that for me?”

Steve nods his head weakly against his arm. “Yeah.”

“Okay, Steve. Now get up. Get _up_!”

Steve’s eyes snap open in the empty bathroom. His clothes are absolutely drenched in sweat, but he feels a little clearer. He flushes the toilet again and then drags himself up to standing using the edge of the bathroom counter. His reflection is ghost-pale. He runs the tap, splashing icy water on his face. Another search through the medicine cabinet reveals a bottle of Tylenol, so Steve takes a few of those with a swallow of water from the sink, too tired to look for bottled water. Finally, he feels a little more stable and clear-headed, so he rinses his mouth out with water and a little toothpaste, then walks back to the bedroom. Natasha doesn’t stir as he strips out of his sweats and into a t-shirt and pair of boxers, but he thinks the pattern of her breathing picks up. 

“Go back to sleep,” Steve whispers. “Everything’s okay.”

Natasha doesn’t answer, but her breathing evens back out again. Steve curls around her, her skin cool against his, and closes his eyes. He falls to sleep easily this time, and sleeps deeply and dreamlessly until the morning, when Natasha wakes him getting out of bed.

“Hey,” she says, when she sees him watching her. 

“Hey,” Steve answers. 

“Where’d you go last night?” 

“Bathroom, was all. Bad dreams,” he says, though he feels a little guilty saying that. If Bucky is a dream, he’s certainly not a bad one.

“Hmm.” 

“How about you?” Steve asks. He sits up, feeling a little light-headed, but much better than he had during the night. His shoulder throbs. 

“No bad dreams for me,” Natasha says. “It’s my iron Russian constitution.”

“We should all be so lucky,” Steve says. 

Natasha changes from her sweats into her fatigues, then starts shoving the sweats back into her pack and closing everything up. She tosses a protein bar to Steve, who catches it with one hand.

“Eat. We need to get back on the road,” she says.

Steve nods. “Yeah, I’d like to get some miles under us.”

He gets out of bed and stands, stretching. His shoulder screams at him, but he makes himself stretch that arm out anyway, rotating his shoulder. If his muscles stiffen up, he’s not going to be much use on the rest of the ride, so loose and in pain is the better choice. Natasha watches him with a frown on her face.

“Is your shoulder still bothering you?” she asks. 

“A little,” Steve says. 

“But it _is_ healing, right?”

“It’ll be fine.” 

Natasha’s forehead creases with her deepened frown. “Okay.” 

“Do you think Valerie and Jenny are up yet?” Steve asks, trying to redirect the conversation. 

“I heard someone in the bathroom a few minutes before I got up, but I’m not sure who it was or if they’re up for good,” Natasha says. “It’s still pretty dark out, but I figured by the time we were up, ate something, and got our stuff packed up again, it would be light enough to go. We had some real snowfall overnight.”

Steve moves the bedroom curtain to the side and looks out. A light frosting of snow covers the lawn, though the roads still look clear. He sighs.

“We’d better get moving. I’m concerned about the roads freezing,” he says.

“Me, too. Get dressed, and I’ll go see if Valerie is up.”

Natasha leaves Steve to change and pack his damp sweats from the night before away into the duffel. He uses the moment of privacy to take a look at his shoulder. The wounds look even worse in the dim light of morning, but Steve no longer feels feverish like he did in the night. He doesn’t know why he isn’t healing, or how it is he’s gotten an infection, not after so many years of being seemingly resistant to any kind of illness. All he can figure is that something in the flash has done something to counteract that benefit of the serum, something that only affects him, because Natasha’s injured hands seem to be healing well enough, though he hasn’t actually seen the cuts since he stitched and bandaged them. Steve hopes she isn’t in the same boat as him, keeping a lid on the severity of her wounds until they reach their destination. 

He barely gets his shirt on before Natasha returns to the room, thermos in hand.

“Valerie is my new favorite person in the world,” Natasha says. “She has a French press. She got up and boiled some water, and now we have coffee for the road.”

“Bless her,” Steve says. He finishes strapping on the rest of his gear, then rolls his shoulders, stretching out his arms in front of and then behind him. Natasha narrows her eyes.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Fine,” he says. “Slept a little crooked, is all. All that biking.”

“Okay,” Natasha says, but it’s the kind of ‘okay’ that suggests she thinks he maybe isn’t _actually_ okay, and that she’s got his number.

“I’m ready to hit the road whenever you are,” Steve says.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Natasha says. “I’m ready if you are.”

Steve nods and picks up his pack, gritting his teeth as he slides his arms through the straps. His shoulder feels hot and stiff, tender to the touch, though still much better than the night before. He slings the large duffel over his good shoulder, picks up the shield in his other hand. 

“Let’s get moving, then,” he says. They make their way down the hall and to the living room, where Valerie is waiting. 

“I packed you a little lunch,” she says, handing Natasha a paper bag. “It isn’t much, but I wanted you to have something fresh for your ride today.”

“You’ve already done so much for us,” Steve starts to protest, but Valerie cuts him off with a firm shake of her head. 

“Uh-uh. It’s been an honor to have the two of you,” Valerie says. “I’m just glad to know you’re still out there, fighting the good fight, and trying to find a solution for all of this.”

Steve feels the guilt settle, heavy as lead, in his gut. They aren’t even looking for a solution, really. He’s just trying to get Natasha to her family. Maybe once they’re there, though… maybe then, they can find a way to work this problem. 

“We’ll do whatever we can,” Steve promises, meaning it. Natasha nods her agreement, which reassures Steve. Even if he can’t find a solution, Natasha will. She won’t give up, and if she doesn’t have the answers herself, she’ll find someone who does. It might be Tony, it might be someone they haven’t met yet, but she’ll find them, whoever they are.

“We need to get on the road,” Natasha says, her tone apologetic. “Make use of what little light we have before things start to freeze.”

“Of course, of course,” Valerie says. “Oh, I wish you had a way of letting me know you made it there safely.”

Steve and Natasha exchange a look before Natasha says, “We have a radio.”

Valerie holds her hands up in protest. “I couldn’t possibly,” she says. “You’ll need it.”

Steve doesn’t feel like he can argue with that, but Natasha apparently does, because she says, “If we get where we’re trying to go, they’ll have one there. We can let you know we made it.”

“Are you sure?” Valerie asks. Steve glances at Natasha, because _he_ isn’t sure, but Natasha is already nodding her assurance.

“Absolutely,” Natasha says. The confidence in her voice surprises Steve. She looks at Steve and nods at the duffel. He sets it down on the couch so Natasha can rifle through it until she finds the radio, which she hands to Valerie, along with the large pack of replacement batteries. “This should reach us if we reach our destination.”

Valerie’s eyes are bright with unshed tears, and she clutches the radio to her chest like a priceless treasure. “You’re really sure?”

This time, Steve answers. “We’re sure.” He may not be sure, but if Natasha is, that’s enough for him. 

“Thank you,” Valerie says. 

Steve isn’t sure what to do next, because part of him would like to stay there in Muncie, surrounded by good people. Maybe if they stayed, he could rest until his shoulder healed, and until his body wasn’t on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion. He and Natasha could both sleep peacefully through the night. They could help the community stay strong and stable, and keep the darker forces from creeping in. They could make this a home. 

He’s almost ready to suggest this to Natasha, until he sees the look on her face. He knows, then, that she’s thinking it, too, that she has played this story out in her head and rejected it. This isn’t home for Natasha, and Steve promised himself he would get her home.

“Well,” he says. “Thank you again for your hospitality, Valerie.” He reshoulders the duffel. 

“Anytime, Steve, Natasha,” Valerie says. She holds the front door open for Steve and Natasha to exit into the pale morning. Steve loads the duffel into the bike trailer, then he and Natasha mount their bikes to head back to the Cardinal Greenway. Before they can leave the carport, however, a high-pitched wail comes from the front steps of the house.

“ _Nooooooo!_ ” Jenny cries, running towards the bicycles, still in her purple footie pajamas. “Don’t leave, don’t go!”

“Shit,” Natasha says under her breath. Steve sighs and dismounts from his bicycle to catch Jenny in his arms when she flings herself at him.

“Don’t go, Captain America! Stay here at my house,” Jenny pleads with him, tears streaking her face. Steve hugs her to his chest while she cries, looking at Natasha over the girl’s curly hair. Natasha shrugs and mouths ‘what can you do?’ at him.

After a few moments of hugging, Steve sets Jenny down on the ground. She sniffles, but doesn’t fight being put down. Instead, she just stares up at Steve with wet, dark eyes. 

“I’ll tell you what,” Steve says. On impulse, he unhooks the shield from his pack. Natasha’s eyebrows shoot up so high on her forehead, he thinks they might disappear into her hair, but that doesn’t stop him. He hands the shield to Jenny, who holds it against her with both hands for balance. “How about you hold onto this for me until I come back?”

Jenny sniffles again, but her eyes widen. “Really? I can keep it?”

“Just until I come back for it,” Steve says. “That way, I’ll know it’s safe, and I won’t have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands, will I?”

Jenny shakes her head. “No way, Captain America. I won’t let any bad guys get it.”

“I knew I could trust you,” Steve says. He rests his hand on Jenny’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“We need to go,” Natasha says in a low voice. Steve nods.

“I have to go now, Jenny,” Steve says to the girl, who clutches the sides of the shield like a lifeline. “You look after my shield and your mom, okay?”

“I will,” Jenny says solemnly. 

Steve climbs back onto his bicycle, giving Jenny the brightest smile he can muster. “Good girl,” he says. He turns his attention to Natasha, following her down the driveway to turn onto the road. As they peddle away, he can hear Jenny calling after them.

“Goodbye, Captain America! Goodbye, Black Widow!”

Natasha and Steve wind their way through Muncie until they hit the Cardinal Greenway again. The air feels colder this morning, the grass lining the bike path browning and brittle with frost, small patches in the dips. He can tell immediately that they’re pushing themselves harder and faster than the day before. His focus narrows as they ride, until Natasha in her pink hat is the only thing he really sees, everything else fading into his peripheral vision. 

They stop briefly after what feels like hours. The sky had grown briefly lighter, then darkened again as it started to snow in earnest. Now, snow lines both sides of the bike trail as Steve and Natasha urinate behind separate shrubs, then quickly eat the lunch Valerie packed for them: ham and American cheese sandwiches on slightly stale bread, individual-size bags of chips, and a small apple a piece. It feels like an indulgence. Natasha tosses the paper bag onto the side of the trail and won’t go pick it up again, even when Steve glares at her.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says, as Steve walks over and picks up the paper bag, balling it up and shoving it into one on of the many pockets on his fatigue pants. “You’re worried about littering? _Now?_ ”

“Bill wanted the trail to stay in good shape,” Steve says, then refuses to discuss it any further, even when Natasha mutters ‘stubborn ass’ under her breath. 

If the first leg that day felt long, the second leg feels interminable. Steve pedals until his legs feel even more numb and his hands cramp from how tightly he’s gripping the handles. They don’t allow the pace to slow, though, even when the bike trail suddenly runs out, spitting them onto a street in what Natasha announces is Rochester, Indiana. All told, Steve suspected they’ve ridden for a good seven to eight hours. 

“I think we’ve got more in us,” Natasha says, as they stop long enough for her to consult her atlas. “I’d like to make it to Bass Lake.”

“That doesn’t even sound like a real town,” Steve says.

“There’s no way we’d make it all the way to Chicago Heights today, even if we bike past dark,” Natasha says as she folds up the atlas page, as though that’s a reasonable counter to Steve’s statement.

“But Bass Lake,” Steve protests. 

“It’s not a real town,” Natasha concedes. “It is, however, a real lake. It’s just a stopping point, another two hours or so from here.” 

“Bass Lake it is, then,” Steve says.

A little over two hours later, they arrive on the shore of Bass Lake. What few storefronts break up the line of docks and lake houses are mostly boarded up. Unlike in Muncie, Steve doesn’t see so much as a rustling curtain. As they roll slowly down the road, Natasha suddenly lets out an exclamation of delight, coming to a stop in front of a gas station.

Steve sighs. “Let me guess. We’re stopping here for the night.”

“Yep,” Natasha says gleefully. “I won’t be denied my chocolate for another night.” 

They walk the bikes to the front of the gas station, then bang on the locked door with no response from inside. Steve reaches behind him for the shield on instinct, feeling a brief shock when his hands meet only empty air and then his pack. That’s right; the shield is back in Muncie. He’s an improviser, though, so instead he just squares himself up and gives door a hard yank, busting the locks and pulling the door open. Natasha looks impressed as she rolls her bike into the store, Steve following her. 

The gas station smells musty inside, like it’s been locked up since longer ago than the flash. The shelves are dusty, but undisturbed, and while the selection isn’t wide, it has Snickers, which seems to be enough for Natasha, who scoops up the entire cardboard display box of them. She tucks the box under her arm as they carefully check the small stockroom and bathroom—both empty—and start dragging shelves over to the windows to provide better cover. 

By the time Natasha is satisfied with their shelf placement, the sky outside is fully dark, but Steve’s eyes have adjusted well enough that he doesn’t need to break out the flashlights. They both prefer it that way, he knows, because light would only draw attention to them. Natasha lays out her bedroll and sits on it eating a Snickers. Steve pops open a can of Pringles and a bottle of lukewarm Coca-Cola from the dark refrigerator case. Luckily, the store hadn’t stocked anything fresh that would spoil without refrigeration, though a small wire basket near the register does hold a pair of shriveled apples and one sad-looking lime. 

“I’ll take first watch,” Natasha says, mouth still full of Snickers.

“I can take it,” Steve protests.

“You look like shit. Eat a candy bar. Read an old issue of whatever newspaper they get here. You know, old guy stuff.”

“Funny,” Steve says. “You’re a riot.”

“Then roll out your bag and get some sleep,” Natasha says. “I know you were up last night.”

“It was just—”

“Let’s both act like I’m not a moron, okay? You were up for a while. Lie down. Sleep.”

Steve sighs and makes a big show of rolling out his bedding, but he’s out almost as soon as he lays his head down. He doesn’t really dream anything distinct, just bright flashes of color and loud noises passing rapidly by him, as though he were traveling somewhere fast. He wakes feeling disoriented to Natasha quietly saying his name, then takes his turn at watch. It passes uneventfully, and he honestly can’t say if he dozed a little or not. He knows that both he and Natasha made it safely through the night, and that Bucky didn’t visit him.

Natasha dumps as much chocolate as she can fit into her pack, while Steve grabs saltier snacks like nuts and pizza-flavored Combos. When Natasha sees him putting those into his pack, she mimes a gagging face.

“You know where I can get a slice around here?” Steve asks. Nastasha shakes her head. “Then let me have my Combos, wiseass.”

“I won’t stand between you and your nasty Combos, don’t worry,” Natasha says.

“I wasn’t worried. I could take you in a fight.”

“A _fair_ fight, maybe.”

“Natasha Romanoff, are you telling me you’d cheat in a fight?” Steve asks, doing his best to channel the spirit of every mother he’d ever met in his life. 

“Telling you? No. Heavily implying it? Yes,” Natasha says. She bats her eyelashes at him, and he throws a bag of Corn Nuts at her. She laughs and smacks them out of the air. When they hit the dirty linoleum floor, the bag splits, spraying Corn Nuts everywhere. 

“You spilled my nuts,” Steve says, deadpan as possible. Natasha starts laughing so hard she almost chokes. Steve throws another bag of Corn Nuts at her. It bounces off her chest, which only makes her laugh harder. She picks the bag up off the floor and throws it back at Steve, and they spend the next minute or so pelting each other with bags of Corn Nuts until they’re both teary-eyed from laughing.

“I needed that,” Natasha says. She brushes Corn Nuts dust off the sleeve of her fleece pullover, which she’s layered over her fatigues. Steve tries to ignore how tired a little playful snack-tossing made him, especially with another long day of bicycling ahead of them.

They pack up and hit the road, cutting over to State Road 10 heading due west to I–65. Natasha thinks they can make it to Interstate in four hours if they keep up the pace from the previous two days. At that point, they’ll assess whether it’s safe enough to swing north towards Chicago or whether they stay on smaller state roads and other surface streets. 

Natasha stays a few bike-lengths ahead of Steve as they ride, framed in his line of sight by the fading halves of the skyline. The Manhattan side has lost some of its distinct features, though the Brooklyn side still looks recognizable. Steve never would have considered the loss—or at least the reduction—of his accelerated healing a boon, but the idea of always riding towards home, no matter where he’s actually going, feels comforting now. His shoulder burns and throbs, the fabric surrounding the wounds sticking to them and pulling as he rides, but Steve keeps his eyes fixed on Natasha and the skyline.

When they reach I–65, the decision of whether or not to approach Chicago is made for them. They travel from empty farmland into a blasted corridor of twisted metal and trees all leaning away from the direction of the city. The road they’re biking passes over the Interstate, and the view from above tells them all they need to know. I–65 is packed wall to wall with cars, some abandoned and some still occupied by the bodies of their owners. The line of cars extends to the horizon both north and south, the scant spaces between vehicles filled with luggage spilling clothing and the other detritus of human lives. 

“Shit,” Natasha says, stopping at the bridge’s edge to stare at the cars below. “Just… shit.”

“Do you think it goes all the way to Chicago?” Steve asks. His stomach churns, forcing him to suck in deep breaths of cold air to avoid vomiting. 

“I think it goes all the way to what’s left of Chicago,” Natasha says quietly, her hand to her mouth, eyes widening as they move back and forth over the cars, taking inventory. 

“Jesus,” Steve says. “Jesus Christ.”

“We need to go. _I_ need to go,” Natasha says. She’s back on her bike suddenly, pedaling hard and fast over the rest of the bridge. Steve watches her for a beat too long before remembering he’s supposed to be following her, losing sight of her for a second as she takes a sharp left turn at a T intersection. He catches up to her just past the entrance to a neighborhood. 

“Nat,” Steve calls out, trying to flag her down, and finally pulling even with her. “Nat! Stop!”

Natasha stares straight ahead, standing up on her pedals and leaning forward to go faster. She keeps going until her front tire hits a pothole full of iced-over water. Her bike jerks to the side and she flies off it, skidding across the ground on her knees and forearms. 

“Nat, Natasha, are you okay?” Steve asks, scrambling off his own bike in his haste to get to her. Natasha remains on elbows and knees, her body dropping lower as she rests her head on her balled-up fists. As Steve kneels on the ground next to her, he can hear her rapid, panicked breathing. “Hey, hey, it’s alright, just let me take a look at you.” 

When Steve reaches for one of Natasha’s arms, though, she flinches away from him, so he drops back onto his heels and waits. The knees of her fatigues are torn, her skin underneath scraped and bloody. Her forearms look okay, as far as Steve can tell; her heavy fleece pullover must have acted as a buffer between her and the ground. Steve sits there for several minutes trying to visually assess Natasha before she finally uncurls her body, pushing up onto her hands and knees. 

“Let me help,” Steve says, offering her a hand, but she slaps it away, rising to her feet unassisted.

“I’m fine,” Natasha says. 

“You’re obviously not fine,” Steve says. “Is anything broken or sprained?”

“I said I’m fine,” Natasha replies sharply. “I need to check the bike and make sure it isn’t damaged.”

“The bike is fine, Nat. You’re what I’m worried about.” Steve tries to reach for her again, but only gets halfway before withdrawing his hand. 

“We need to get back on the road,” Natasha says. She walks back to her bicycle and rights it, inspecting the wheels and handlebars for damage.

“Let me patch up your knees, at least,” Steve says.

“I’ll do it when we stop for the night.”

“Nat.”

“We need to start moving again,” Natasha says. “We need to get there. I need to know…” She trails off, turns her attention to fiddling with her bike chain.

“You need to know what?”

Natasha sighs. “I need to know that Clint and Laura and the kids aren’t stuck in some traffic jam like that somewhere. I need to know they’re alive.”

“Nat,” Steve says, cautiously stepping closer to her. She doesn’t flinch or try to slap him away this time, so he moves in to put his arms around her. At first, she stays stiff and lets him hug her awkwardly, but then she relents and moves in to fill the space between them, allowing him to hold her close to his chest. He strokes her tangled hair with one gloved hand. After a few long moments in the hug, her panicked breathing slows. Steve hears her taking slow, measured breaths, calming herself.

“I’m okay,” Natasha says. 

“Okay,” Steve says. “You sure?”

Natasha nods against his chest. “I’m sure. We really do need to get back on the road.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve says. He gives her a squeeze before releasing her. She takes a step back and gives him a thin smile, wrinkling her nose a little.

“I hope Hawkeye Base has a laundry facility,” Natasha say, with a tone that sounds like an attempt at humor. “You kind of smell like death.”

Steve thinks about the festering wounds in his shoulder, the black fluid soaking through the gauze and into his shirt. “Nah, that’s just my new cologne I got at the gas station,” he says, forcing a smile. “What, you don’t like it?”

“Was it called ‘Eau de Roadkill’?” Natasha asks. “Maybe ‘Carrion Musk’?”

“It’s call ‘Midwestern Funk’, and don’t worry, I got enough of it to share later,” Steve says.

“Gross. You’re so gross, Rogers.”

“It’s part of my charm though, right?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Yes, Steve. That’s exactly what makes you so charming.”

“Get back on your bike, Romanoff,” Steve says. “We’ve got places to be.”

“And people to see,” Natasha says. She throws her leg over her bike, then looks back over her shoulder at Steve. “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“It was just a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again.” She lifts her chin, challenging him to argue with her. Instead, he just brings his index and middle fingers up to his forehead in a brief salute. 

“Yes ma’am.”

They ride, and they ride, and they ride. Each cold, flat mile blends seamlessly into the next, with acres of cornfields dying on the left and trees losing their shriveled, brown leaves on the right. If the state line has a marker to inform them they’ve crossed from Illinois to Indiana, they miss it, only knowing for certain that they’ve changed states when they pass a dairy with an Indiana address on the sign. They drink water sparingly and eat only the amount necessary to keep their energy up in order to minimize the need to stop. Steve’s mind wanders, leaving the monotonous job of pedaling to his body. He imagines faces, both familiar and strange, in the quavering shadows spread across the road. Once, he thinks he sees Bucky biking there beside him. 

Natasha keeps up a grueling pace. They don’t slow until they reach the small town of Bourbonnais, where Natasha gestures them to stop in front of a brewery. Though the brewery, like everything else in town, looks closed, a faint malty scent still hangs in the air. 

“That was a long ride for a drink,” Steve says, eliciting an amused snort from Natasha. 

“We’re over halfway to Hawkeye Base,” Natasha says. “I want to keep pushing on, even if it means biking through nightfall.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Steve asks.

Natasha shrugs. “Probably not, but I don’t know how many more days of this I’ve got in me.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to go ahead and break for the night, then?”

“No,” Natasha says, with a firm shake of her head. “It’s not the physical push.”

Steve nods his understanding. “It’s the mental toll.”

“The roads are flat and more or less straight. My night vision is good, and I know from experience yours is even better,” Nastasha says. 

With the retinal damage, Steve isn’t sure that’s still the case, but Natasha isn’t the only one with questionable mental stability at the moment. He nods again. 

“Want to grab a beer before we get back on the road?” Steve asks. 

Natasha smiles. “Sure. Maybe a nice Nuclear Winter IPA.”

“Fallout Stout.”

“Geiger Lager.”

“Porter, uh. Porter… something.” Steve shrugs. “Nope. I got nothing.”

“Maybe we’ll just run in and see if they’ve got a working bathroom,” Natasha suggests.

“As long as I don’t have to name any beers,” Steve says.

The brewery is unlocked and doesn’t appear to have been ransacked. The bar top even looks like it’s been wiped clean in the last few days. They use the dark bathrooms, where the toilets still flush and the sink water runs ice cold. Steve feels too hot, despite having been out in the cold for hours, and splashes a little cold water on his face. In the near darkness of the bathroom, his reflection in the mirror looks ghostly pale. 

Natasha is waiting for him outside the bathroom when he exits. As they’re heading for the door, she snags a six-pack of something called Cherry Bomb from a display stand, leaving a twenty dollar bill on the counter. Steve must look surprised, because Natasha arches one delicate eyebrow at him. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Just, after the gas station discussion…” Steve begins. 

Natasha shrugs. “That didn’t feel like looting. This would.”

“Has anyone ever told you that your standards are _real_ arbitrary?” Steve asks.

“Only Clint about a thousand times,” Natasha says. “It makes you happy, though, right? Leaving the money?”

“Yeah, it makes me happy. Somebody loves this place,” Steve says. “Places like this are going to be important for people, the ones who want to stick together.”

“You’re a sap, Rogers.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the whole maple tree, Romanoff.”

Natasha lets out a musical little laugh. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

“Must mean it’s time to get back on the road,” Steve says.

“It must,” Natasha agrees. 

The six-pack clanks as Natasha tucks it into place under the duffel bag. It’s a friendly sound, reassuring somehow. Natasha glances at Steve as she’s walking back to her bike, pauses, then walks back to him. She peers critically at his face, even taking his chin between her thumb and forefinger to turn his head side to side.

“Hmm,” she says.

“Has my personal grooming fallen by the wayside or something?” Steve asks.

“Your color’s not good.”

“What? With all this fresh air and sunshine?”

“Hmm,” Natasha repeats, narrowing her eyes. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Steve considers for a moment, really strongly considers, telling her about the worsening wound in his shoulder. He knows what would happen then. She would insist they stop for the night, maybe longer, likely until his shoulder actually heals. They would be delayed by days, possibly weeks, from reaching the Hawkeye Base. That would mean days or weeks of not knowing if any of the rest of their team is alive, risking the chance that those who were alive might move on to a different location. Steve made a promise to Natasha that he wouldn’t leave her; he made a promise to himself that he would get her to Clint, Laura, and the kids at any cost. 

“I’m fine, Nat,” Steve says, hoping she’ll accept it, praying she won’t push. “A little out of shape, maybe.”

Natasha snorts and releases his chin. “Sure. You, out of shape.”

“Hey, I was retired until you called me for that mission,” Steve says. “All I did was sit around on my ass eating pizza and watching movies.”

“Riiiight,” Natasha says. 

“That’s pepperoni withdrawal you’re seeing in my eyes,” Steve says. 

“I’m sorry I asked,” Natasha says.

“I could mainline an entire Italian sausage.”

“God, you’re so gross sometimes.”

“I’m telling you, just—” He smacks the crook of his elbow like he’s raising a vein. “My mom was a nurse, you know, and I spent a lot of time in the hospital back in the day. I can start an IV like a champ.”

“Yeah, I bet you can,” Natasha says, heading back to her bike.

“Put that Italian sausage in the IV bag, and I’m good to go,” Steve says. 

“We’re going now,” Natasha calls back over her shoulder.

“Maybe top me off with a few mushrooms,” Steve yells back at her.

“It’s a shame I can’t hear you talking while I’m bicycling away from you!” Natasha shouts, tugging her pink hat down around her ears with one hand as she starts pedaling away. Steve laughs and follows her back onto the road, heading west.

The sky gets darker as they ride, the clouds above a grim, ugly shade of grey. The rain starts about an hour later, pelting them with stinging drops of water that soak through their outer layers. When the rain changes to snow again, they’re already wet and shivering as they do their best to keep up a brisk pace on the bikes. Steve’s teeth chatter hard enough to hurt, and keeping up with Natasha proves increasingly difficult. 

Another hour in, the sky now well and truly dark, Steve realizes that his fever from two nights before has probably returned. He feels nauseated, both too hot and too cold at the same time, and his energy is rapidly flagging. Little white twinkles float through the air. It’s all he can do to focus on Natasha pulling farther and farther ahead of him, let alone the road or any surrounding scenery. 

Of course, that’s when the animals show up.

When Steve first sees the dark shapes moving along the side of the road, he thinks he’s hallucinating. They’re too large and the wrong shape to be dogs, at least any breed of dog Steve has ever seen in person. The first one that breaks out of the shadows and starts following close behind Steve bike is almost the size of a small pony. 

“Nat,” Steve calls, but she can’t hear him with the wet snow and wind whipping past her face. 

The animal—it can’t be a wolf, either, he’s seen wolves at the zoo and they don’t have such long, angular faces—moves up even with Steve. Another joins it, keeping up effortlessly, even as Steve tries to increase his own speed. Soon, a third animal joins the group, this time to Steve’s other side. He can still see more keeping pace from the roadside, still shrouded in darkness. Coyotes, he thinks. They must be coyotes.

“Nat!” Steve yells louder. “Natasha!” 

The largest coyote, the one closest to the bike, nips at Steve’s leg, just grazing the fabric of his pants. Steve tries to jerk his leg away, but in the process unbalances the bicycle, sending it onto its side and tipping the bike trailer over with a loud crash. Pinned under the bicycle, exhausted from the long ride and ongoing fever, Steve can only shout and take a swing at a coyote that creeps close to him. The animal darts back into the shadows, but soon recovers from its initial startle and starts moving in closer again, joined by the rest of its pack. 

If Natasha didn’t hear Steve’s shouting, she did hear the crash. Her bike comes to a stop twenty yards ahead. Steve watches her leap from the bike in alarm, letting it falls as she runs towards him, sidearm in hand. She waves her arms and shouts loudly, which spooks all but the largest coyotes. The massive fulvous beast snarls and snaps at Steve, hackles raised. The smaller coyotes circle back in, surrounding Natasha, who keeps yelling at them. 

One coyote makes the mistake of breaking cover and rushing Natasha, who quickly dispatches it with a single shot. While the rest of the pack dashes back for cover, the large coyote lunges at Steve, closing its jaws around his arm. Steve swings wildly at it with his other arm, trying to pummel it in the head. The smaller coyotes continue darting in and out of cover at Natasha, who fires at them when they’re close. Finally, Steve manages to dislodge the coyote from his arm, just in time for Natasha to shoot it through the head. At that, the remaining pack members skitter off into the night.

“Steve!” Natasha yells, righting the bicycle so she can get to him. Even with Steve’s thick layers, the coyote managed to bite through the fabric and into the meat of his arm. Blood pumps out of the punctures. Natasha grabs his arm, squeezing the bite with both hands to slow the blood flow. 

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Steve mumbles, though it’s obvious to both of them that he’s not okay at all. “I can keep going.”

“The hell you can!” Natasha says angrily. “You got bit by a coyote.”

“I hope it wasn’t rabid,” Steve says, more to himself than to Natasha.

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Natasha says.

“Did you know Saint Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals? Means he’s the patron saint of coyotes.” Steve tries to sit up, but gets lightheaded and lies back down on the blacktop again. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Natasha squints down at him in the darkness. She has ice crystals in her hair, framing her face like a painting of a Russian fairytale. Steve reaches up for her with the hand not attached to the bitten arm. He cups her cheek in his hand. She frowns. 

“Shit, Steve,” Natasha says. She releases his arm with one hand, wiping the blood off on her pants before putting the back of her hand to his forehead. “Shit. You’re burning up.”

“Where there is injury, pardon,” Steve murmurs, letting his gaze wander away from her face and up at the dark, dark sky. “Where there is doubt, faith.”

“No Catholic bullshit, Steve. Look at me. Hey, look at me.” She takes his face and shakes it. “Steve Rogers. Look at me.”

Steve blinks hard, refocusing his eyes on Natasha. “Hey, Nat.”

“Goddammit, Steve. How did this happened?” she demands.

“I think a coyote bit me.”

“No, Steve. Before then. You’re running a fever. Are you sick? How are you sick?”

Bucky stares down at him, worry written across his face. His brows are furrowed so hard that the line between them might stick, just like Steve’s Ma always told him it might if he kept making that face. 

“It’s okay, Buck. It was just a coyote,” Steve murmurs. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t do this, Steve,” Bucky tells him.

“I’m just gonna take a rest. Just a catnap,” Steve says, his speech slurring. 

“I’m sorry, pal, but you can’t do that,” Bucky says. “You’re with Natasha, remember? You’ve gotta get our girl to Iowa.”

“Oh, okay,” Steve say softly. “That’s right.”

“So you’re gonna sit up now, alright? You’re gonna tell Natasha that you’re fine, and you’re gonna get back up on the horse.”

“They didn’t ever teach me how to ride a horse,” Steve says.

“It’s just a figure of speech, Steve. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Count’a three, okay? One, two, three—”

Steve abruptly sits up, and Natasha gasps in surprise. He blinks at her a few times, his vision and head slowly clearing. 

“Sorry, Nat,” Steve says, and it doesn’t come out slurred at all.

“You were talking to Bucky,” Natasha says. Her eyes are wide, her face pale. She looks _frightened_ , an unfamiliar look on her.

“I think I hit my head when I fell,” Steve says.

“You’re running a fever,” Natasha says. 

“Maybe your hands are just cold,” Steve suggests, which makes Natasha glare at him.

“Don’t bullshit me, Steve. I know something’s going on. There’s something wrong with you.” Her flushed cheeks are visible even in the darkness, standing out against her skin’s pallor. She looks furious. One of her hands hovers in the air, like she’s reaching towards Steve, or maybe just released him. 

Steve struggles to stand, avoiding putting any weight onto his injured shoulder. Natasha offers him her arm, which he begrudgingly takes in order to maintain his balance until he’s firmly on his feet again. Once standing, he brushes gravel and frost from his clothes while Natasha goes to the bike trailer, lifting the duffel bag and checking the items packed under it, moving things around. She comes back with a first aid kit. Steve stands quietly as she cleans and bandages the bite on his arm, her movements sharp and jerky. 

“We need to stop for the night,” Natasha says, once Steve’s arm is wrapped. 

“Out here in the open?” Steve says. “No. No way.”

“You were just attacked by coyotes, and I know there’s something else going on with you even if you don’t want tell me what it is,” Natasha says. 

“I told you I’m fine. That’s all there is to tell.”

“Steve,” Natasha says, crossing her arms. 

“Nat,” Steve counters, mirroring her body language. “We can’t make camp in the middle of coyote country.”

“Fine,” Natasha says with a huff. “Fine. We’ll keep going until we find a decent place to stop and make camp, but we’re _not_ going to push it. Your arm needs a chance to heal.”

“My arm’ll be fine. It’s just a little bite,” Steve says.

“‘Just a little bite’, he says, like he wasn’t just laid out half-dead in the street,” Bucky whispers near Steve’s right ear. Steve whips his head around, but nobody’s there, just the flat, empty landscape, too dark even for him to see the skyline. 

“Did you hear something out there?” Natasha asks. Steve shakes his head. She purses her lips and looks for a moment like she wants to say something else, but instead she walks to her bicycle. She watches over her shoulder until Steve is safely back on his own bike before setting off again, this time at a slower pace.

After only a few minutes of riding, Steve is glad for the reduced speed. His arms ache as he grips the handlebars tightly. His legs shake as he struggles to build up enough momentum to coast for a while. Blood and ichor ooze from his various wounds. The sharp, fresh quality of the pain from the coyote bite helps keep his mind clear, though, so whenever Steve feels fuzzy around the edges, he flexes his injured forearm. The bright flare of pain wakes him right up.

Hours later—or so it feels, anyway—when they finally reach something vaguely resembling a town, Steve uses the last of his physical and mental resources to dismount from his bike without immediately keeling over. They could have traveled four miles or forty for all he can tell. Natasha chooses a storage unit in a small, double-row rental facility as their camp for the night, easily picking the padlock on the roll-up door.

“I could’ve busted that,” Steve says.

“Sure you could’ve, if you could walk this far,” Natasha says, still sounding terse, the same tone Steve had thought of as annoying not that many days ago. Now he recognizes it as a sign of how worried she is. 

Natasha lifts the door, revealing a mostly-empty unit, just a few clear bins filled with Christmas decorations tucked in the back corner next to a fake fir tree. She rolls her bike inside, and Steve follows slowly, leaning on the bike and letting it hold his weight. He moves so slowly that Natasha already has her bedding laid out before he props the bike against the side wall of the unit. She lights the camp stove and pulls MREs from her pack while Steve unrolls his own bedding next to hers. 

“Chili mac for both of us tonight,” Natasha says, handing Steve a pouch. “Figured I’d keep it simple for you.” She puts a small pot onto the camp stove and pours water into it. 

“Thanks,” Steve says. He opens his MRE and starts eating without bothering to heat it. Normally, chili mac is a treat; tonight it tastes like sand. He eats it all, because he needs the fuel and Natasha will notice if he doesn’t finish. Before he eats his dessert, Natasha taps him on the arm with her oatmeal cookie, and he wordlessly swaps it for his chocolate banana nut bar. 

“Okay, now you sleep,” Natasha says, pointing at his bedroll. 

“I can—”

“No, you can’t. Whatever you’re about to suggest, you can’t,” Natasha says. “What you can do is lie your ass down and sleep.”

“Wake me when it’s my watch,” Steve says.

“Don’t I always?” Natasha asks, which isn’t exactly a promise, but Steve lets it slide. He lies down on his bedding and closes his eyes. 

Steve runs. He’s been running since he can remember, and he doesn’t know how far he still has left to go, just that his booted feet pound one after the other on blacktop that shimmers with heat. The horizon is nothing but a brilliant white blur ahead of him. On either side of the road, the landscape is baked mud cracking in the hot, dry air, nothing growing as far as Steve can see. Sweat soaks through his uniform, staining the blue with salty white marks where it evaporates. Under his helmet, wet hair sticks to his head. A drop of sweat rolls from his hairline and down his forehead until it joins with other sweat beading Steve’s eyebrows. He wipes his face with the back of one hand, but keeps running. 

“Where you off to in such a hurry?” Bucky asks from Steve’s left side. Has he been keeping pace with Steve the whole way? Steve can’t remember.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. 

“Then why are you going so fast?” Bucky asks.

“I know I have to get there soon,” Steve says. He hears the distant cry of a carrion bird, but the bleached sky is empty when he looks up. 

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Mind if I keep you company?”

“Sure. You’re going there, too.”

“Oh, am I?” Bucky asks. 

“Of course,” Steve says. 

“Well, alright, then.”

The day gets hotter and hotter, though Steve can’t actually see the sun, only the blanched dome of the sky. A long black shape appears on the horizon, gradually resolving itself into buildings stretching from one side of his field of vision to the other, two islands of skyscrapers connected by spiderwebs strung from towers. 

“That’s where I’m going,” Steve says, pointing at the cityscape ahead of them.

“Ohhh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense,” Bucky says. “How far you think it is from here?”

“I don’t know. Seems like it keeps getting farther away.”

“Optical illusion, maybe. How you plan to get there?”

“I’ll keep following the skyline, I guess,” Steve says. “I’ll get there eventually if I do that.”

Bucky puts his metal hand on Steve’s wounded shoulder, the weight of it pressing down. Suddenly, they aren’t running, but standing still in the middle of a dead landscape, the skyline still a shadow in the far distance.

“You know that’s where I’m at, right?” Bucky asks him. “You know I’m not really here.”

“That’s why I was running so fast,” Steve says. 

“I know, Steve.” Bucky gently squeezes Steve’s shoulder. 

“If I can push myself, If I can just keep going…”

“When it’s the right time, you won’t have to work so hard,” Bucky promises. “It’ll be easy as breathing. When it’s time, all you have to do is follow that skyline. You follow it all the way down to me.”

“But not now?” Steve asks.

“Not yet,” Bucky says. 

“Soon.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He steps in closer to Bucky, presses their mouths together like they never got around to doing before. “Guess I’d better wa—”

“Wake up, Steve.” Natasha’s voice is a whistle, a ringing alarm clock, Bucky’s knuckles rapping on the doorframe. 

“I’m up, I’m— what time is it?” Steve asks. His head swims and his arms both protest loudly as he pushes himself up to sitting. “Is it my watch?”

“It’s morning,” she says, voice softer now. “You needed the rest.”

Steve furrows his brow. “I’m fi—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Natasha interrupts. “Don’t insult me by lying to me. We don’t have to talk about it. I can’t make you talk to me, but I don’t have to listen to you lie.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“You don’t have to be sorry if you don’t lie to me. We’re in this together.”

“I know,” Steve says. “We are.”

“We _are_ ,” Natasha repeats firmly. “Do you need to take a day?”

Steve almost insists he doesn’t, the words of protest springing to his lips automatically, but he stops himself. “Probably, but I’m not going to. We both need to get there.”

“Alright,” Natasha says. She smiles at him, looking tired but determined. 

“Did you get any sleep?” Steve asks. They move slowly, rolling up their bedding with care.

“A little. Kept having these bizarre coyote dreams. Real Warner Brothers Roadrunner kind of stuff,” Natasha says. “Anvils, holes painted into the sides of cliffs, desert everywhere.”

Steve remembers dreaming about a desert, though not much else. He nods. “I think that’s a normal side-effect of coyotes.”

“Let’s eat and get on the road. We still have a lot of ground to cover.”

“ _And miles to go before I sleep._ ”

“Robert Frost?” Natasha asks, raising a brow at Steve. “Really?”

Steve shrugs his one good shoulder. Natasha pointedly looks away from the bad one. “I always liked poetry,” he says. “Frost especially. _Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice._ ”

“ _But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate_ ,” Natasha quotes. “Full of zingers, Robert Frost.”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t wrong,” Steve says.

“Once was plenty for me. Twice is more than anyone…” Natasha trails off, giving Steve a thin smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. 

Natasha sighs and looks away. “I never told you I was sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For calling you in from retirement,” she says. “If I hadn’t had you out in the field with me on that mission, you would have been at home with Bucky when—”

“Hey,” Steve interjects. “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever done anything I didn’t want to do if I had another option?”

Natasha shakes her head. “No.”

“Then don’t apologize to me for me doing exactly what I wanted to do,” Steve says.

“Okay.”

“So we’re good, right?”

“Yeah,” Natasha agrees. “Alright. Let’s get moving.”

Eat, pack up, ride. The pattern, already well-established, is easy to follow without much thought. Steve’s legs feel like lead. His head feels like somebody rang his bell, and how. He can still pedal, though, and the roads are still straight and flat enough for him to keep up a decent pace, sticking close to Natasha this time. Fluid seeps from his bullet wounds and from the coyote bite, soaking through the bandages and making dark spots on his fatigues. Steve can’t see the color of the blood from the bite, but he’d bet the farm it’s the same black as his shoulder. 

He’s so tired, so incredibly tired, but he has to keep going. _Continue._ He has to make it to Iowa to keep his promise. Natasha’s pale hair flutters in the wind from under the edges of her knit cap. Her cheeks are ruddy with cold. Steve feels a rush of love for her so strong it almost knocks him off his bike, love for everything she’s been for him: Best friend, lover, co-conspirator, fellow soldier and survivor. 

“You could stay with her, you know,” Bucky whispers to him, but Steve sets his jaw and shakes his head. 

He couldn’t stay, and moreover, he doesn’t want to, as much as he loves her. He has somewhere else to be. He doesn’t have a perfectly clear picture of where that is, but he knows it’s not Iowa. He knows who’s waiting there for him.

“Stubborn ass,” Bucky says, and his voice is carried away on the wind along with Steve’s answering laughter. 

Natasha glances over at Steve. He smiles at her and she smiles back before they both turn their attention back to the road. This leg of the journey feels harder physically, but easier mentally. Steve has always been goal-oriented, and the goal is so close now. 

They punctuate the ride with short stops, frequent enough to keep Steve from stiffening up too badly, but not long enough to delay them too much. A few stops in, Natasha hands him a couple of pills. Steve looks at her with his eyebrows raised in question.

“Ibuprofen. It might take the edge off,” Natasha says.

Steve could argue that there’s no edge to take off, but he told her he wouldn’t lie to her, so he just nods his head and swallows the pills without protest. He isn’t sure if they make a difference, but he keeps hanging in there, even as the hours pass one after the other, even as the sky starts to darken. Snow begins building up around the edges of the road. 

They make camp in an empty barn that night. Natasha rolls her bedding out directly alongside Steve’s, and after they eat, they climb into Steve’s bed together, Natasha’s blanket draped over them. They make love quietly and fiercely, clothes barely pushed out of the way, and Steve tries hard not to feel like it’s a sort of goodbye. Nobody keeps watch that night. They sleep until the sky lightens, then straighten their clothing, roll up the bedding, and return to the road again without a word of discussion. 

As they get closer to the Iowa border, they start seeing signs of life again. They pass fields full of cows cropping at patches of grass they’ve dug out from the thin layer of snow. Several times, they see other people, including a couple riding on the back of a shaggy-footed draft horse. Steve and Natasha both wave at the couple, but they don’t stop, not for them or anyone else. 

Steve’s muscles are burning by the time they reach the Mississippi River in Moline, but as they cross the river into Iowa, he feels a rush of renewed energy. They’re so close now. 

They stop on the Iowa side of the Arsenal Bridge for food and water. Natasha picks the lock to a building facing the Mississippi so they can go inside and use flushing toilets. When Steve is washing up at the sink, he feels something wet trickling from his nose. He wipes it away with the back of his hand without thinking about it, and is startled to see the black smear on his hand. His reflection shows a small, smudged line of black fluid coming from his nose. 

They’re so close. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose like he used to do when he had nosebleeds, holding it for a full sixty-count before releasing it. He cleans up all the visible black with a damp paper towel, then washes his hands. 

“Steve? You alive in there?” Natasha calls from outside the bathroom.

“Yeah. Out in a second,” Steve answers. His reflection’s face looks clean, though pale.

“Are you good?” Natasha asks him when he exits the bathroom. 

“How much farther?” 

“Seven hours, give or take.”

“I’m good enough for seven hours, give or take,” Steve says.

“Well, I asked you to be honest,” Natasha says, with a light, forced-sounding laugh.

Steve gives her a small smile in return. “Yeah, you did.”

“Nothing else to do but keep riding, is there?”

Steve shakes his head. “No way out but through.”

Natasha straightens her already-straight back. That’s the thing about Natasha: there’s always more where that came from. She’s always got something left in her, no matter how tired she is, how beaten or broken. Maybe it’s a product of the Red Room, but Steve thinks it’s really just her, at the heart of it. Natasha doesn’t know how to quit; not that long ago, Steve would have said the same thing about himself.

The final hours on the road are the hardest. They always are, on any trip, but especially on journeys home. If they’re right, Natasha’s home is waiting for her at Hawkeye Base. If Steve is right, his home is waiting just a little beyond that.

Steve tries to take in the countryside as they bicycle through it. He hasn’t spent any time on the ground in this region of the country, and he feels like he should give it his fair attention. His mind wanders, though. His thoughts drift in and out, between the here and now and some other, more distant time and place. In the end, Iowa can’t keep his attention.

Natasha checks her atlas each time they stop, charting out their course on the fold-out maps. Steve leaves the job to her, trusting her to make the wisest choices and remember the route clearly. He can barely focus his eyes on the tiny letters, place names reduced to meaningless blurs. He can still see the skyline, though, maybe even sharper than before. Details Steve thought he’d lost back in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois – suddenly they’re reforming before—within—his eyes.

“Close now,” Natasha says, when they break to heat up MREs and consult the atlas again.

“Good,” Steve says. “I’m looking for—”A cold shiver runs through him, followed by a fierce fit of coughing that leaves him struggling for a breath. When he can finally breathe again, he sees Natasha watching him with a look of horror on her face, mouth agape and fingers pressed over it.

“Steve,” she says softly.

“I’m okay,” Steve says, but she shakes her head sharply a few times, then moves her fingers from her lips to his. When she pulls them away, holding them up for Steve to see, they’re streaked with black fluid.

“Do we need to stop?” Natasha asks, suddenly uncertain after days of holding everything and them together.

Steve shakes his head. “Stopping here won’t make it any better. We need to get to the base.”

Natasha bites her lower lip, barely nodding. Her eyes look too bright as she gets back on her bicycle. He follows. What else is there to do? When he coughs as they ride, he turns his face into his sleeve and wipes his mouth after. Natasha occasionally looks over at him, but says nothing.

Another hour, then two, and finally a third, then a large sign declares they’ve reached the Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area. The sky is getting dark, and Steve can’t see any lights shining within the wooded property, but Natasha heads into the park without hesitation, so Steve follows. They bike for an additional half-hour through the deepening darkness before Natasha abruptly stops. 

She reaches into her pack for her flashlight, then shines it into the trees, flipping the light on and off in three quick bursts, one long, then two more short. Natasha turns off the flashlight. They stare into the dark woods, waiting. 

The seconds stretch out, threatening to become minutes, but eventually an answering series of flashes comes from the woods: two long, two short, one long, three short.

“That’s Clint’s signal!” Natasha says. “It’s him, he’s here, he’s really here!”

Steve can barely see her face, but he hears the tears in her voice, the relief. He feels it, too, a sudden lightening of a burden heavier than he realized he was carrying. Rustling comes from the woods ahead of them, and while both Natasha and Steve put their hands to their sidearms instinctively, neither makes a real move to draw. Soon, Clint bursts out of the underbrush, bundled in a heavy sweater and thick scarf, but looking none the worse for wear.

“Clint,” Natasha says, nodding her head in a surprisingly restrained show of greeting. Steve suspects she’s fighting off full-blown crying.

Clint apparently has no such need to maintain a façade, however. He shouts “Nat!” and sweeps her into a hug so tight that her breath comes out in an audible rush. “You’re here. I knew you’d make it. You’re about when we expected you.”

“We?” Natasha asks, her voice tinged with hope.

“Laura and the kids,” Clint explains.

“How did you know when to expect us?” Steve asks.

“I’ve been talking to a woman named Valerie on the radio,” Clint says. “She explained that you left it behind, gave us an idea of your pace and route.”

“Laura and the kids are alright?” Nastasha asks.

“They’re fine! They can’t wait to see you. Steve, too!” Clint turns to Steve to embrace him, but Steve is suddenly wracked with another fit of coughing so hard that it makes him stumble. He hits his knees in the road as he gasps for breath between bouts of coughing. Steve can’t see the black fluid he’s coughing up, but he can feel it, thick and foul, in his throat and on his lips.

“Steve, hey, what’s happening?” Clint asks, on his knees beside Steve and helping support him upright. “Nat, what’s wrong with him.”

“I don’t know,” Natasha admits. “He got shot back in Ohio, and I think… Something went wrong. He isn’t healing. He’s sick, feverish, coughing up black—”

Steve interrupts her with another violent round of coughing. This time, it makes him gag, and he jerks out of Clint’s grasp, falling onto his hands and knees to retch onto the ground in front of him. He vomits and coughs, he can’t breathe; it’s like it was before the serum, pain everywhere and barely anything left in him to fight it.

“Let’s get him up to the house,” Clint says to Natasha. “Scott and Sam can come down for the bikes and gear.”

Steve wants to ask about Sam, but instead he has to focus on trying to breathe and quell the gagging. Clint and Natasha manage to get him onto his feet, sagging between them as they bear most of his weight. His feet drag and stumble as he tries to walk the winding path through the woods.

“Just a little bit farther, sweetheart,” Bucky says from behind him. He ruffles Steve’s hair, the knit cap lost somewhere on the trail behind him.

“You never called me sweetheart,” Steve murmurs.

“What was that, Cap?” Clint asks.

“Sure I did,” Bucky says. “Maybe never where you could hear me. I thought it, at least. That much I know.”

“Wish I’d heard it,” Steve says.

“Nat, what’s going on?” Clint asks. He sounds upset. “Who’s he talking to?”

“You’re hearing it now, aren’t you?” Bucky says.

Steve smiles. He smiles through a bout of coughing and the wave of nausea that follows. He smiles through the dizziness and buzzing in his ears. He can’t stop smiling. “Yeah, Buck. I’m hearing it now.”

“Bucky,” Natasha says quietly, probably to Clint. She raises her voice. “Steve? Listen to me, Steve. I need you to listen to me.”

“You did it, Steve,” Bucky says. Steve can almost feel Bucky’s arm around him, a heavier arm than Clint’s or Natasha’s. “You got our girl here safe and sound.”

“We did,” Steve says. A hand presses to his forehead.

“He’s burning up,” Clint says. 

“I know. He’s sick. It’s bad. He might be septic,” Natasha answers.

“I feel okay,” Steve says, because suddenly he does. He feels warm and weightless. 

“Cap, you’re far from okay, but we’re almost to the base. We’ve got medical supplies, antibiotics, the strong stuff,” Clint says from far away.

“We’re almost there,” Natasha says.

“You’re almost there,” Bucky says.

“How do I get there?” Steve asks. “What do I do?”

“Just stay upright,” Clint says. “Don’t worry about walking. We’ve got you, we can carry you if we have to. Hell, we’ll drag you.”

“Tell our girl you love her,” Bucky says, so Steve says it.

“I love you, Nat.”

“I love you, too, Steve,” Natasha says. “I just need you to—”

“Now you look for the skyline. Do you see it?” Bucky asks.

“I see it,” Steve says.

“What do you see, Steve?” Natasha asks.

“You see Brooklyn, sweetheart? You see her right there?”

“I see her, Buck.”

“Who do you see?” Natasha says. “Steve, don’t do this.”

“Nat, what the hell’s happening?” Clint asks.

“Now follow her,” Bucky says. “Follow that skyline. She’s gonna lead you right to me. She’s gonna lead you home.”

Steve takes one stumbling step towards the skyline, then another, stronger step, and then he’s running, Brooklyn right in front of him. The road is clear and familiar, leading him straight to Bucky, and Steve follows it all the way down. Bucky’s dressed real smart like he used to, crisp crease in his pants and a shine on his shoes. He holds his arms out for Steve, and Steve runs into them, and they kiss, deep and long like it means everything, and the morning sun dances across the East River. 

Home.


End file.
